Ugobe Inc. files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy 

Ugobe Inc., maker of the widely hailed interactive robot baby dinosaur named Pleo, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on April 17.

The filing comes a little more than six months after the company announced that it would move its headquarters from Emeryville, Calif., to Eagle.

Local and state officials, including Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, embraced the move as a key step to building the Eagle-Star Technology corridor – a potential area specially zoned to foster and develop tech companies – and as evidence that the state’s recruitment efforts of out-of-state businesses was working.

When Pleo was unveiled about three years ago, it was hailed as one of the best inventions of 2006 by Time Magazine, featured in The Wall Street Journal and as a guest on NBC’s “Nightline” and the “The Today Show.”

Hopes for the company had begun to fizzle by this winter when word began circulating that the company was in trouble. In February, Wired magazine publicly speculated on its Web site that Ugobe was having problems moving Pleo – which retails for between $280 and $350 – during a time when consumer spending is down.

The company’s bankruptcy attorney, Bruce MacIntyre of Perkins Coie in Seattle, said Ugobe laid off most of its employees at the end of 2008 in conjunction with the move from California.

The bankruptcy filing lists $1.6 million in assets, including $1.5 million in tooling to make the Pleo in Hong Kong, and $3.6 million in liabilities.

The debts include $353,500 in royalties owed to each of the company’s co-founders, Caleb Chung and Derek Dotson; $604,161 owed to Hong Kong company Jetta Co. Ltd.; and $284,468 to Arrow Electronics of San Francisco.

The company reported gross income of $209,669 so far this year compared to $19.2 million last year.

MacIntyre said a trustee will be appointed as part of the bankruptcy process to take over all the company’s assets, including potentially valuable intellectual property that has not yet been priced. That includes 16 patents, 60 invention disclosures to document potential patents and a number of trademarks.

“Clearly there’s a value there,” he said. “The only way to find a price on that is to find a buyer who’s willing to pay a price for it.”

MacIntyre said the company had preliminary discussions with several potential buyers before the bankruptcy filing, though they wanted to wait for the court process to move ahead.

Chung, the CEO, was not immediately available for comment.

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