Patent attorney comes up with a profitable remedy

The Seattle Times (MCT) - For two decades, patent attorney Jeff Haley helped other people start companies. A lifelong inventor, Haley held patents in his name but nothing worth launching a company until 2001.

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That's when his passion for inventing collided with his training as a chemist to solve his aggravating canker-sore problem.

The medicine _ licorice-root extract _ is not as exciting as the vehicle that delivers it, a little patch that people place over the sore. Its adhesive is strong enough that it will not slip off, but gentle enough that it does not irritate lips and gums.

Called CankerMelts, they have been sold at Amazon.com and Bartell Drugs since 2004, and are now available at Longs Drugs and Rite Aid stores. Walgreens, the nation's largest drugstore chain, plans to start carrying them this year. The product costs $6.99 to $7.99 for 12 discs.

Sales have gone so well that Haley, who sank $700,000 of his own money into the startup, retired in 2006 from the Bellevue, Wash., law firm he co-founded and has raised $1 million from investors. In the next two months, he hopes to raise another $1.5 million for OraHealth, his new company that has seven other employees and a factory in the Factoria of Bellevue.

Haley is on a streak. With the mouth-adhesive discs, which can be set to release medicine over time, he figures the possibilities abound, and he is tackling each one in order of speed to market and potential profits. He is saving prescription drugs, for example, until he has exhausted over-the-counter applications.

Next up: XyliMelts for dry mouth. They are for people who take medication or have disorders that cause dry mouth, which can cause discomfort and lot of cavities.

XyliMelts also come in handy if you do a lot of public speaking or go on the occasional bender.

Why not just drink water? "If you drink enough water, you can rehydrate. But if you put one disc in each cheek, you solve the dry-mouth problem before you go to sleep."

XyliMelts went on the market in November but are sold only online for now.

Haley uses the mouth adhesive for XyliMelts Mints, too. They adhere to your cheeks so you can eat, sleep or play sports while they work, and no one sees you sucking on a breath mint.

Most of the money Haley raises goes toward marketing, he said. "We can stop spending money on marketing at any time and break even."

His plans are bigger. He wants to sell OraHealth when revenues reach $50 million to $100 million, which he hopes will be in the next three to five years. In 2008, sales from CankerMelts were below $1 million, but they are growing fast and will be augmented this year by XyliMelt sales.

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Haley's dream of selling has been stoked by the big dollars fetched by other mouth-product companies, including Church & Dwight's recent $380 million acquisition of Orajel and GlaxoSmithKline's $170 million acquisition of Biotene, which makes popular products for dry mouth.

Meanwhile, he continues to dabble with other inventions. At a patent auction this fall, Haley was paid $100,000 for authentication technology for cell phones that he invented in 2001.

"I sold it cheap," he said. "That ($100,000) gave me more than $3,000 an hour for my time."

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© 2009, The Seattle Times.