Rita Crompton, Licensing Agent + Consultant to Inventors: How She Became “The Inventor Lady”

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So, we're almost out of time. I want to talk about you now and how you ended up getting this level of understanding on all the different aspects of licensing and bringing the product to market. And then one thing that I always find interesting, like, I get asked all the time, like, “How are you branded as The Patent Professor?” And that's in my case, that's what I was, an adjunct professor at NOVA law school, and known as The Patent Professor. And then in my practice, the name just carried. But tell us about your background. And then I'm very curious about The Inventor Lady, and how that ended up becoming your brand.

Oh, many, many years ago, over 15 years ago, I met a gentleman dressed in a clown suit at a Denver Metro Chamber event. And he reached out to the aisle aisle and grabbed me. And we chatted a little bit and everything, super nice guy, ex rocket scientist. I knew him until he passed away. But he convinced me to go to an inventor meeting because we were a service provider. And so I went and, you know, much to everyone's surprise, I sat there and I was quiet for a long time. And I rode all over the state with three senior inventors, engineers that had multiple products in the marketplace. And I learned from them. And one of them was a licensing agent; took me under his wing. One of them was a patent attorney, one of them was an engineer. And they all had products in the marketplace. So I listened. And then they sold me the licensing business a few years later. So I learned; I learned from the best, and traveled all over, talked to a lot of people.

Well, they complained about these inventor meetings that we were going to. You know, “in the old days, we did it like this,” and you know, “we used to do it like this, and we never charged this much money.” And I go, “Gentlemen, this is not rocket science.” And I was, you know, kind of poking fun at them because they were all ex rocket scientists. “Let's just start our own group.” And it's like, “Oh, my god,” there was just silence in the car. You know, and I promised them that we would never charge for our meetings and we never have. They have all passed on. So you know, we've kept that promise to them otherwise they are going to haunt me in my sleep. But that was the beginning of the Inventors Roundtable and now we reach out all across the country and we do not charge. You can find guest speakers in a lot of different places. We have open conversations for the inventor so they can ask questions, they can get information and resources. And I was down at the Denver Metro Chamber one day and you know at the front desk and a gentleman walked up to me he goes, “I know you. You're that inventor lady.” Like, it works for me, and I went back to my desk and inventorlady.com was available and here we go.

The rest is history, as they say.

The rest is history. Yep.