About Craige
Craige Thompson combines an engineer’s eye for detail with a lawyer’s precision. He has moved between product development and patent law for decades. The shift feels logical once you hear the arc of his career. It begins in circuits and boards and ends in claim charts and examiner interviews.
He holds degrees in both engineering and law, and later added business training. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin Law School. He also completed an executive MBA program at the Quantic School of Business and Technology.
Thompson’s first professional stop was technical. In the early 1990s he worked as a design engineer at Plexus Technology Group. The hands-on work on hardware and systems gave him practical knowledge that later informed patent prosecution strategies. After law school he entered the intellectual property bar. He joined Fish & Richardson P.C. as a patent lawyer, an experience that introduced him to high-volume patent practice and complex client counseling.
In 2009 he launched Thompson Patent Law. He used a set of striking descriptors at that time—“The Patent Killer,” “The Examiner Whisperer,” Entrepreneurial Patent Lawyer—and he has written and spoken under those banners. His practice blended prosecution work with advice for entrepreneurs, and he began to publish and speak about the intersection of invention and commercialization.
More recently, Thompson founded Invention2Exit in 2023. That venture is aimed at helping inventors and small companies consider the pathway from an idea to a commercial outcome. He balances one-on-one patent work with broader programming intended to prepare inventors for exit conversations and licensing discussions.
He has pursued additional business credentials, including executive education in mergers and acquisitions at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. That coursework supplements his legal practice when clients face strategic transactions or need to understand how patents play in a sale or investment process.
Across his work he has focused on patent prosecution, examiner interviews, and counseling inventors about how patent assets fit into a commercial plan. He maintains an author and speaker presence on those topics and runs a private practice under the Thompson Patent Law name while leading Invention2Exit. He concentrates his current practice on prosecuting patents and advising inventors and small companies on commercialization and transactions.
