MAY 2007: AROUND THE STATE, INNOVATION
Helping
inventions make it to the market
Kedma Ough, program director of the newly formed
Micro-Inventors Program of Oregon, is a straight-talking
businesswoman with an affinity for getting new ideas to market.
Her consulting business, Avita, provides affordable advisory
services to women, minority and disabled entrepreneurs. We
caught up with her on the heels of the first annual Oregon
Inventor’s Showcase, held in April, to talk about what
MIPO has to offer.
What is MIPO?
It’s a nonprofit program of East County One-Stop [a
workforce development program in east Multnomah County]. My
company, Avita, provides the training center as an in-kind
donation.
How did you start working
with inventors?
My background is economic development. Three years ago someone
came to me with an idea they paid to have protected through the
U.S. Patent Office. They said, “I’ve got this
patented and now I want you to sell it.” Well, it was a
piece of garbage, it wasn’t marketable. I began to do
some research and realized that there was no support out there
for inventors.
And there was your
opening.
Yes. I set up a program to support independent inventors
throughout the state who are looking at intellectual property
as a vehicle for income. The goal is to serve individual
inventors with a secondary goal of supporting minority, women,
disabled and low-income inventors. And then we linked up with
the Lemelson Foundation [which funded MIPO with a $100,000
grant].
Give me an example of how you
work with inventors.
One inventor was a paraplegic who came up with an alternative
to the leg bag that paraplegics have to use. He invented a
device that was contained in the wheelchair. Prior to us
spending any money, I went with him to pitch the idea to three
medical suppliers.
You asked them if they would
sell it ?
Yes. And we got three letters of intent. What special services
do inventors need that’s different from your average
entrepreneurs?
There’s a whole range of services. Some just need
intellectual property services; others need intellectual
property and business services. We have a patent researcher who
will look at what ideas are out there and we have patent
attorneys. And we have an entire design team who will look at
the design of the invention. And we look at whether it’s
a licensing or a manufacturing deal. Sometimes people come in
thinking they want to manufacture their invention and we tell
them they’ll need $1 million to start and then they say,
“What about licensing?”
Do you help them with a
business plan?
That’s my part. I help them figure out if there’s
a business there, whether there’s enough of a market. I
put all the pieces together. The last part is the finance
piece. We have advisers to help with venture capital, angel
investing and SBIR grants.
Are these advisers
volunteers?
We do not hire volunteers for the crucial parts of our
business. Everyone is paid. If you have a volunteer counsel and
they make a mistake, you don’t have recourse. One of the
benefits of working with us is that these services are provided
at a fraction of the cost because we’ve negotiated a
below-market price from our providers.
Even discounted, these
services have to be expensive. How large is MIPO’s
budget?
We have $100,000 to operate for the first year. We’re
very creative. Eventually we want to take a small percentage
from the income of successful inventors to fund future
inventors. And MIPO clients pay annual dues; we want them to
have some kind of commitment.
Are you working with
inventors groups statewide?
The Portland Inventors Group meets at our office once a month.
We’ve been to Coos Bay and Roseburg.
We want to link up with the inventors groups so that we can be
a thread to connect them. We’ve still got more road trips
to make.
— Christina
Williams
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