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You may provide information on clubs as long as you provide your full name, address, phone (home and work), and paid-for e-mail address contact information. Only your name will be posted but the other information will be available to anyone having a legal need for it. Other's, of course, are free to post a differing opinion or impression of "facts." I reserve the right to edit, limit, post, remove, etc. any annotations as I see fit. The posting of any annotation does not mean it is a verified fact, the party that provided it is responsible for its correctness and content.
COLORADO, "The Inventors' Roundtable" (This material was updated 4/28/07 at the request of Deb Carney, Attorney for Rita Crompton.) (The above material has been further edited on 4/30/07 at the request of Raymond P. Burrasca, Esq. of New York, attorney for Rita Crompton and The Inventors' Roundtable.) If in any way my posting of the prior information was unjustly unfavorable to The Inventors' Roundtable, Warren Roh, The Idea Place LLC, Rita Crompton, or FLeCusa International I sincerely regret it. The material presented only my opinion and what I believed to be facts. Now I'm not so sure about the specifics of the facts. See below.
The following is an e-mail message directly from Rita Crompton and is placed here to present her statement as to what the facts are. She may very well be right, I don't know, but am in the process of continuing to collect facts. Anyone with additional facts is encouraged to send them.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 2:31
AM
Subject: Defamation
Dear Mr.
White,
Out of courtesy for a fellow
professional (which is more than you have granted either me or my colleague,
Warren Roh), I thought I would share with you the true state of affairs as
they exist, rather than the wildly inaccurate set of facts which you believe
or, as we suspect, with which you were conveniently
provided.
First of all, most professionals verify
facts before going to print. In our case, you clearly did not. In
addition, the changes you made to your website in response to the notice from
one of my local Colorado attorneys clearly does not express your regret or any
sort of apology on your behalf for your injurious and defamatory
statements. Your “corrected” website continues to contain defamatory
implications and substantial distortions. Moreover,
on your website, you state that "the
posting of any annotation does not mean it is a verified fact, the
person that provided it is responsible for it's correctness and
content." Since you did not identify the person who provided
the annotation, I can only assume that you, and not a third party, is the
author of, and responsible for, the defamation. Secondly, even if
it was derived from a third party, as I’m sure you know given the fact that
you are in the printing business, printing defamation, by itself, makes
you responsible for its correctness and content, particularly were you have
not verified the information and where you neither indicate the source nor
print the defamatory statement as a "quote" from someone else and then
identify the person who made the statement.
In this regard, it is important for you
to be apprised of the actual facts here. You are clearly under a
misimpression about us, our organization and the value that RMIA
provides. In fact, not only are your facts inaccurate but the
implications you create by disparaging us and The Inventors’ Roundtable while,
in the same breath, praising RMIA, clearly disserve your readers and the
inventing community in Colorado as a whole.
Here are the verifiable
facts.
RMIA:
- I
was asked to be on the RMIA Board. At first, I accepted, but then
resigned after being told by people within the organization who I respect
that it was a foolhardy move for me to serve on the RMIA board, given the
prior history of the organization, the fact that there was no liability
insurance for the board members in place and some concern about matters at
the executive level being previously mishandled.
- Before I was ever a member of RMIA, there was a mass
resignation of Board Members. I have been advised this was because of
concerns about liability created for the organization by certain acts of one
or more of the prior board members.
- The
overarching motivation within the RMIA (which I both observed while there
and was repeatedly advised about from existing and former RMIA members ) was
their singular focus on gaining new members (and, therefore, membership
dues) rather than giving value to those who were already there and regularly
attending their meetings.
- Warren Roh was a very respected member of the board
for many years. He left along with several board members, two of whom
were attorneys, in 2002. Some of the board members who left at the
same time served on the board for nearly twenty years. When
Warren and I left the RMIA completely in 2006 it was to form a free
inventors organization to serve the Colorado inventor community. The
fact that The Inventors' Roundtable is not membership based and is free to
all ruffled a lot of feathers in the RMIA since that organization relies
heavily on dues from its members.
- I
have been advised that despite their 501(c) status, there are not regular
financial audits being conducted of the organization’s books.
- RMIA
previously had a relationship with the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce
(perhaps the most admired and productive civic business organization in the
Rocky Mountain Region) and lost that connection through the
behavior of
one or more of the RMIA officers/board members after the mass resignation of
board members in 2002.
- When
I last checked, the RMIA members did not get to elect the officers.
- There has been a persisttent lack of change at the
Board level within RMIA. The same people have been elected
year-after-year. Recently, a new member of the Board, was forced to resign
after one month as President because he wanted to make changes and insist
that elections of officers be opened to consideration by the membership.
- While I and other former members attended the
meetings, meetings essentially served as a “classroom” for the Board
members. There was no open discussion. The Board only allowed
people to speak if they raised their hand and were called upon by the
President.
- The
RMIA Board (an institution that you, in other places on your website, insist
on as being in place in organizations which practice good corporate
governance) consists of basically three service providers. None of
these providers render their services on a regular pro
bono basis; all of them charge.
- We
have recently been advised that RMIA charges all non-member visitors to its
meetings a fee of $25.00 just for attending. In addition, we have
further learned that they charge $60.00 for a service provider consult.
- The
basic, undeniable and entirely supportable fact is that The Inventors’
Roundtable owes it existence to the failures of RMIA; IRT was started
because the RMIA grossly underserves the inventing community’s needs in
Colorado.
.
Inventors’
Roundtable:
- Endorsements: Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce
State of Colorado Small Business Development
Centers
University of Colorado—Leeds Business School
Advancing Colorado
CTEK
Governor’s Office of Economic Development and International
Trade.
- The Inventors’
Roundtable has no membership fees and no fee for attending a meeting.
- Our quarterly
meetings are held at the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce with a mini
inventor showcase for inventors which is free.
- Service
providers DONATE their time to work with (not talk at) the inventors in a
workshop environment every month in several locations.
- Inventors can
post their invention on the website for FREE for as long as they like.
- Meetings are
open discussions and the inventors talk more than the service providers.
- There is no
income from inventors for the regular, quarterly or annual meetings;
the one-day bootcamps we conduct charge $39.00 per person and provide a full
lunch, a notebook with loads of useful (not promotional) materials, and both
classroom instruction by knowledgeable instructors as well as the ability to
network and have private conversations with both experienced and
inexperienced inventors.
- The Denver Metro
Chamber and the Inventors’ Roundtable started the Inventors’ Focus Group
Program. The Inventors’ Roundtable was offered part of the fee from
the focus group charge and declined it in order to maintain our status as an
advocate for the inventing community without trying to profit off of it.
- We are featured
on NBC’s, local affiliate, KUSA Channel 9, as well as on other media
outlets, on a regular basis.
.
The next time you decide to defame either an
individual or an organization, I strongly suggest you verify your
facts.
You will be hearing from my New York attorney
shortly.
Sincerely,
Rita
Crompton
P. S. Feel free to publish this in full on your
website.
FLeCusa
International
Rita
Crompton,
Managing Director
3140 S.
Peoria St. #212
Aurora,
CO 80014
cell -
303-910-8889
fax -
720-535-5220
e-mail:
rcrompton@flecusa.com
http://www.flecusa.com
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