Steve Benesi of FM Technology Has Mastered UVF Filtration. Over 30 Patents Prove It.

If you’ve ever looked at a “simple” filtration problem and then watched it explode into slurry chemistry, media selection, power constraints, and environmental risk, you’ll feel right at home here. I’m joined by Steve Benisi, CEO and founder of FM Technologies, an inventor with so many patents, he has lost count. "It's roughly 35 to 40 patents," he says. He has decades of experience building industrial filtration systems that have to perform under real mine-site conditions. 

We start with Steve’s origin story, including the pressure filtration technology he developed in 1989 and later sold as a major acquisition, and why he moved from pressure filters into next-generation vacuum filtration. 

From there we get into the engineering of Steve’s Universal Vacuum Filter (UVF): what “solids-liquid separation” really means in practice, how filtration rate, cake dryness, and filtrate clarity get measured, and why continuous operation matters when downtime is expensive. Steve explains the hands-on grind behind advanced filter media development and the design choices that aim to reduce water use, cut vacuum and compressed air power, and shrink the equipment footprint compared to conventional vacuum disc filters and filter presses. If you care about mining tailings filtration, dewatering, minerals processing, or reducing operating costs while improving performance, this one is loaded with specifics. 

We also talk candidly about mining realities, including remote operations, the knowledge gap between corporate layers and on-the-ground testing, and the consequences when tailings management fails. To close, Steve lays out a practical roadmap for engineers who want to patent their work: provisional applications, utility patents, why rejection is normal, and when confidentiality agreements can protect you before you spend big. 

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Steve Benisi

Roopinder 0:18

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Masters of Technology Happy Hour, where once a week I have a drink with someone I meet in the course of business, but someone I'd like to get to know better as a person. Steve Benesi is CEO and founder of FM Technologies. He's also an office mate, so he's right down the hallway from me. Steve runs a company that does filtration, a fluid separation. Hi Steve, welcome to the show. But you're not in the office.

Steve Benesi 0:49

No. Oh, gotcha. This is an office at home, and there's a there's a shop here. There's actually a couple properties here. And there's a shop, and uh some of the world's most advanced technological developments happen right here in Navarre.

Roopinder 1:10

That's right. Do your neighbors know how many uh how famous you are? Uh occasionally they remind me, but somewhat when one of your filtration units blows up or something?

Steve Benesi 1:22

No, that when we're isolating hydrogen, sometimes we have a little uh a little noise, let's say. Oh, okay, okay.

Roopinder 1:30

So I should just I should tell everybody that Steve and I were office neighbors and also close to neighbors in the we both live in Novato. Steve has a considerable amount of patents. Tell tell us how many.

Steve Benesi 1:45

Starting in 1989, I I I I even have a presentation. You don't need to see that, but if you'd like to, I make a real fast run through and show you. Yeah, would you go ahead? This is uh just a very brief PowerPoint. Uh we're introducing UVF technology. UVF is universal vacuum filter, it's completely new technology. So that's the technology is used for separating solids from liquids, filtration. And this presentation happens to be from Quorum, uh, which is a conference in Quebec, Canada, to tell you a bit about the background of FM technologies uh and what UVF vacuum disk filter technology is, and how it is, how it is different, the key advantages, and then uh it's gonna show uh uh installation of a UVF unit. It's UVF, it stands for Universal Vacuum Filters, uh, and they separate liquids from solids, and they're the most cost-effective and the newest technology in the world. Let's

From NumaPress To A Big Exit

Steve Benesi 3:05

begin. I'm gonna give you a background what you and what UVF vacuum filters are and why it's different, the key advantages, and then installation photos and details of a UVF installation. Um in 1989, I developed the world's most effective pressure filter. Its name was NUMAPress, NUMAPRES a pressure filter. And it was it's used in chemicals, uh, minerals, pharmaceuticals, food, uh, and it's all over the world. It's in fifty roughly 50 countries now.

Roopinder 3:50

Um you graduated in 73 from Cal State, Chico. Uh and you have a degree in it says graduate metallurgical and residential architecture. I'm not even aware of that.

Steve Benesi 4:03

That's graduate study. After I got my bachelor's degree, my bachelor's degree was in industrial engineering. Then I studied graduate studies in in metallurgy and architecture.

Roopinder 4:15

Metallurgy and architecture are two different things, right? So yes, sure possible. How did you manage to combine those two things?

Steve Benesi 4:25

Basically, I wanted to build my own home out in the country and uh have it unique, designed, conceived, and designed by me. So uh I took the I did this in conjunction with the graduate work in architecture. That's how I ended up with a home way up in a little place called Manton.

Roopinder 4:50

Manton? Where's that?

Steve Benesi 4:52

It's in a a valley below Mount Lassen in Northeast California.

Roopinder 4:58

Oh, okay. Now that's your home. You built it with your own hands. Yes.

unknown 5:03

Really?

Steve Benesi 5:04

Yes, I built it with my own hands, all by myself out in the country.

Roopinder 5:08

You still have it?

Steve Benesi 5:09

Oh no, no, no. Um I was I I can't even remember which year. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Roopinder 5:15

Is that your that was your home before you moved to Nevada?

Steve Benesi 5:19

Well, I I moved to Novato uh in 1992 91.

Roopinder 5:28

1992. Okay. Got it, got it. Okay, thanks for that background. Now back to back to FM Technology. So that was your own company. Numa Press was the name of the company and the product. And you sold that then to FL Smith. Am I saying that right?

Steve Benesi 5:46

Yes, FL Smith is is um an enormous uh OEM engineering corporation. And um they well, they they were very interested and uh uh came after us, especially. Uh I suppose these big companies they lose sales. I think that's what really uh occurs. They lose sales and they take notice. And uh of course, it was a very big sale, and I I became a president of one of the presidents of FL Schmidt. Um, and I was president of filtration, of course. And so that that gives you a background before that. That's that's when the pressure pressure filter.

Roopinder 6:36

Got it, got it. Okay, I I thought maybe they made you president on the strength of the acquisition that you came in and said that you were yes, they purchased it's it's in the public domain.

Steve Benesi 6:49

It was an $18 million uh purchase by F.L. Schmidt. Uh they purchased roughly 18 or 20 patents of my patents, and I I worked with I worked with the group for a few years. And so that gives it gives you a background uh of F.L.

The Shift To Vacuum Filtration

Steve Benesi 7:10

Schmidt. And then I left F. L. Schmidt uh actually began again. I I I started uh playing with vacuum filters and medias. And so uh I'll go back and say another expertise I have is on filter medias. I designed a lot of the woven filter medias uh that are used on large automatic filter presses today.

Roopinder 7:34

It's a different kind of filtration now?

Steve Benesi 7:37

Well, the the new filtration is all vacuum filtration. Okay. In 2013, uh I invented filters and medias, and uh the key objective for me, of course, is to outperform anything that exists, any technology that exists by a magnitude by or more. And that's that's very important. I'm that's how I'm driven. I want I want to make sure we're 10 times better than any anybody else. And sounds like it sounds like big numbers, but we've done it. But uh we were replacing conventional vacuum filters and filter presses. Uh if you know what a filter press is, it's a pressure filter, but uh we outperform filter presses uh more almost two orders of magnitude, maybe by 50 times or more. They're usually large, wieldy, have lots of filter area. And so that's our job, is of course to outperform anything that exists. I should add, in all important aspects, uh all pertinent parameters. In other words, you efficiency of throughput, the amount of solids you get out, the amount of filtrate you get out, uh the dryness of the solids, the clarity of the filtrate. Uh, these things are all very, very important.

Roopinder 9:15

Got it, got it. All right, so basically, I know the very basics of filtration, so you'll have to give me a little bit of a uh little bit more detail. What a pressure filter relies on, of course, pressure, but then it forces the liquid with whatever is in it that you're trying to filter out through a medium or or a sieve, mechanical sieve. Is that correct?

Steve Benesi 9:39

That's a that's a good concept. It's it's through a filter media, and the and the filter media uh is going to be specific to each individual application for the most part. My family and my background, uh I think may be aware of my father, Hans Benesi, or my brother Alan Benesi. They're uh they're all my entire family doctors, PhDs. I'm I'm not. And uh my my father was the youngest, he went to Princeton and he was the youngest person in PhD to be selected for the Manhattan district, which became, of course, the Manhattan Project. And so he was at Princeton with Einstein, and they didn't he they didn't know exactly what they were working on back then. But anyhow, that that's the background. My family is a little bit more famous than I am.

Roopinder 10:42

Wow, that's something. That's something, that's a good story.

Steve Benesi 10:46

Yeah, yeah. There's a actually there's a documentary right here. It's not released to the public yet. I'll show it to you personally, okay. Yeah, and so all my all my father's work is still classified to this day, but it has never been unclassified, and that had to do with the isolation of U-235. And my father was in charge with the world's first plutonium. So at that time, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, there were a lot of kidnappings, and the kidnappings were by North Korea and possibly other countries. But uh so I so my father came, he was actually living here, uh Roopinder in my home, um when we made the doc when we made the documentary. But I'll I'll have to show that to you. He's he's worked with uh many Nobel Prize winners, several Nobel Prize winners.

Roopinder 11:52

Did they ever bring Albert over to the house?

Steve Benesi 11:56

I met uh I met several Nobel Prize winners. I didn't meet them, I was very young when uh when these guys got together. They they would get together. Uh and I just remember the bunch of guys getting together, men smoking pipes upside down and smoking cigars, and I didn't know who

Mining Tailings And Real-World Risks

Steve Benesi 12:19

they were.

Roopinder 12:19

Back to filtration.

Steve Benesi 12:21

We're uh hands-on filtration uh trials, and making these filter medias for UVF, it's thousands of trials and it's ongoing. And it's material selections, hydrophilic, hydrophobic, the shape, the size, uh, the match, and then what polymers are going to hold these particles together without interfering with some of the flow between the particles. So all that's all that's uh enormous amount of effort. I was under pressure for minerals applications, particularly iron concentrate, gold leach, gold leach material, uh, copper concentrate, and tailings, the rejected product that come out of mining.

Roopinder 13:18

Customers for your uh for your filters and services are actually mining operations, and that's why you have your Brazil office.

Steve Benesi 13:28

Yeah, yes, Brazil and in here in Utah, Canada, Colorado. Uh and these are in fact some of the world's largest corporations, and so you can imagine the layers that we have to go through.

Roopinder 13:45

I agree Rio Tinto that that's Brazilian firm. And all of them are getting, I would you say they're getting more concerned about not putting bad stuff into the earth and into the water.

Steve Benesi 13:56

That's why you're there there's a a very large disconnect there. The world has changed, and the platforms, the systems that you have to go through. Um, and you're you're gonna find very few people, knowledgeable people at the ground level. There's too much of a divide, more of a divide. And so I think I think the opposites happening, unfortunately. It's getting, it's there's a separation, a separation. Yes, and of course, uh at the ground level, I mean you're you're gonna get your hands dirty, you're gonna be actually testing the material, you're gonna be mixing it at different suspended solids, you're gonna be using flocculence chemicals, all these things you to really learn at the base level what's going to perform. Uh, it's it's needed, and it's becoming rarer and rarer, unfortunately. And but luckily, we've had uh we we have a uh work study program, and we we have some we've had some young people, and oh god, they get so excited. It's refreshing to see that. They when they see what happens and uh comparative data, they get very excited. So that's that's something that's a little bit motivating.

Roopinder 15:19

But there must be a lot of regulation that demands that these mining companies filter out all the all the chemicals and the and the metals uh out of these tailings, right?

Steve Benesi 15:31

Yes, there's there's a lot of regulations. Um and there's an enormous public, enormous public relations campaigns. But uh the the unfortunate truth is that I think was it last year was the record number of injuries and deaths and this kind of thing uh from some of these installations. Uh but you don't, of course, you'll never you'll never uh hear that or see that with any of the companies. So you have to be very, very careful.

Roopinder 16:07

Yeah, and I I read about some of the mining disasters, but they were you don't hear so much about them, should I say, spoiling the environment as much as you hear about the dams that are breaking, because they make these dams out of uh earth dams to hold the all the uh all the water, all the fluid, and they they can break down very easily because they're not, you know, they're just constructed with bulldozers, and uh they don't hold up well.

Steve Benesi 16:36

Yes, so in Brazil, I lived near Brumaginho, um and lost a couple friends in one of the dam failures. So it actually they were colleagues, they were engineers. The dam broke above an engineering house, unfortunately.

Inside UVF Performance And Design

Steve Benesi 16:56

So um here's some key design features. Uh, the filter sector, it's all new proprietary technology. It has the highest throughput of filter media each, it has thousands of tests, obviously. It eliminates use of filter claws and has extremely low power, outperforms. That's the filter sector. I have two sectors in front of me. We're on the presentation. I can't, I was going to show you a sector. Okay, we can we can look at it later. I'll show you a sector that's uh been around for five years and it performs as well as a new sector. So I have the new sector and the old sector here when we're ready. Uh cake discharge. Uh UVF scrapes the cake with the filtered solids directly from the surface of the filter media. And uh there's nobody else actually does that.

Roopinder 18:00

So that's so these can be unattended, they can operate for a long time without an operator.

Steve Benesi 18:07

Oh gosh, yeah. Okay, definitely. They're continuous, they are not attended uh most of the time. And uh it's particularly difficult to filter materials, what they call slimes and many of the tailings, make thin little solidscapes, and uh the UVF is effective even on the thin little solidscapes, and very difficult to uh filter material. And then uh in order to keep the media going and cleaning and never plugging, we invented a two-phase pulse backwash system that has it's very it can be high pressure, and what that does uh vacuuming if you're running a vacuum filter where you're filtering material from a tank, and so you're going outside to into the vacuum. The two-phase backwash is pressure from the interior of the sectors to the outside, and so that pressure pulse cleans the filter medium. Okay, so that's done without chemicals, and you do it right during the operation.

Roopinder 19:30

It says wash up to 10 B, capital B. What does that mean? 10 billion?

Steve Benesi 19:35

10 bar, that's about 150 bar. The UVF has the very highest throughput in the world and produces the lowest moist moisture of any vacuum filter in the world, and that uh it's more efficient and you have less equipment. And so what happens, of course, is you also have the lowest cap OPEX and you know, capital equipment and operating expense. Um one of the largest, I think it was the largest, engineering global engineering company in the world actually did an extensive study with the UVF technology compared to other technologies. And um their estimate, they estimated it's about 40 percent of the other filters. And uh I think that's wonderful. Thank you for your study. I think we actually do a little bit better than that. So uh and uh what the UVF does is it eliminates compressed air requirements, and you have a very small vacuum system. The vacuum system, the vacuum power, takes a lot of power to run a large vacuum over a large area in a conventional vacuum filter. And so that's that's pretty much gone.

Roopinder 21:01

That's important because a lot of these operations are far from uh far from a good source of power, correct?

Steve Benesi 21:08

Yes, I most of the minerals operations are the majority of them are definitely remote. Uh often they're indigenous people, certainly isolated communities. And so that that's exactly correct. And that's of course in the mineral in the minerals industry, in in the chemicals industries, not so much. Sure. And so uh very low water consumption. That that has become very important. That's become particularly important today in dry areas, Australia, Chile, uh, yeah, even uh Mojave Desert. But the um uh other another advantage, it's it's very flexible and and it works continuously. So you have continuous. Operation. And it's good for both what we call coarse particles and very difficult to filter fine particles. And so we put, I see they put down here four millimeter solids thick of solids to 80 millimeters thick of solids. Also, it runs from one to 10 RPM. It has a variable frequency drive. Conventional vacuum filters are generally 1 RPM or 1 half RPM. And the very maximum is about 1.5 or 2 RPM. But UVF goes up to 10 RPM. And so you have the best benefit.

Roopinder 22:46

What is the purpose of rotating?

Steve Benesi 22:48

Well, you you're you have the scraper is fixed. What's scraping off the solid is fixed. Scraping off the solids is a fixed blade, and you're rotating uh around that fixed blade while the solids are being peeled off. So less there's less process downtime for filter sector cleaning. Actually, as I said before, you don't you don't really require any other cleaning, the very small amount of water. And if here's here's a UVF versus vacuum disc. And of course, with the R advantages, our filter media, much higher filtration rate, lower power consumption, and uh power consumption per ton basis. Uh, you make a lot more money with a UVF, your profitability is up. Um and then the solids, uh the filtered solids, you have direct scraping, and so you have full removal removal of the solids, and there's no compressed air required. Uh just comparing it to a vacuum disc which uses filter cloths, filtration rate is relatively low, power consumption is quite high actually on a vacuum disc. And um the cake discharge, they have what's called a snap blow, it's a blowback of the filter media, and they have they use a tremendous amount of water. Uh the water is an exterior wash uh and uh uh a tire filter wash, and it requires a shutdown of the filter. And so the spray washing and so forth is not it's rather poor efficiency, and then the installation footprint is quite high because you're using seven or eight filters of a conventional vacuum disc filter per every one UVF universal vacuum filter. And then and then the UVF produces clear filtrate, uh, whereas the vacuum disc filter actually produces somewhat dirty filtrate.

Test Results And Field Installations

Steve Benesi 25:08

The largest company in Brazil, one of the largest companies, sent iron ore concentrate and tailings, and we're talking drums and drums right here in Novato. And um then, of course, they flew up to watch and they did some compared testing, and of course, you can see got much, much drier than the existing filter, and you can see the cake thickness difference. Uh the throughput five to twenty metric tons per hour per meter squared dry solids with a UVF versus 0.7 to 1 metric tons per hour per meter squared. So that's an enormous difference with the tailings. Um, UVF got up to 10 metric tons per hour dry solids, and the existing filter got uh roughly 4.4 metric tons per hour.

Roopinder 26:11

Got it. Now these are rates, not volumes or quantity, right? So I imagine your neighbors would not be happy with you having metric tons of tailing.

Steve Benesi 26:21

These are rates, and um, I forgot, I think there was five, I think there was five 55-gallon drums of the concentrate and maybe five 55-gallon drums of the course scene.

Roopinder 26:34

Still quite a bit of material that you're handling, right?

Steve Benesi 26:37

There's nothing uh harmful or or hazardous.

Roopinder 26:41

Okay.

Steve Benesi 26:42

And it's it's actually, believe it or not, this is a small, relatively small filter, the um pilot filter. But just it's also very, very good. Uh and we've successfully tested up to about 12,000 foot elevation, which has less vacuum, but uh UVF works fine.

Roopinder 27:06

Oh, good. Those tailings are they're not going into Nevada Creek or though.

Steve Benesi 27:11

Uh we take the tailings to the disposal service. It's non-hazarded, this is garden waste. Oh uh, so here's a UVF filtration, here's a pilot filter. This is uh actually a baby commercial filter. Okay, and it's designed for this is on a skid, fully it's self-contained. Each disc has 12 sectors, and that disc, this the filter area is about 0.3 meters squared with this unit.

Roopinder 27:44

Uh by the way, what does FM stand for?

Steve Benesi 27:46

What it started out as, but we'll call it filtration masters. Filtration masters would be a good thing.

Roopinder 27:54

Now tell me where where is this manufactured because you don't make that in the office here down the hall.

Steve Benesi 28:00

No, no. As a matter of fact, um we we try to use we support our local steel companies, our local fabrication companies, our local equipment companies. Uh, we try to support locals and uh keep folks going. And that's and so the manufacturing uh manufacture components. Uh right now, right we have one little facility on the way to Mare Island. And at uh going back in history with NumaPress, uh Numa Press was actually manufactured in the very largest shop in the entire Bay Area. It's in Napa. Okay. Um it was owned by Napa Pipe, but that was NUMAPress. Now we're building units again, and so we may end up either at Mare Island or uh uh a facility to the north. Okay. So that that you know, those are that's gonna be happening quickly, actually.

Roopinder 29:07

Okay, okay.

Steve Benesi 29:08

So I'll keep going here. All right, please. Oh, here we go. Here's an installation. This is a magnetite, this is an iron concentrate, uh magnetite.

Roopinder 29:19

Okay.

Steve Benesi 29:20

Uh, and it's at Pena, Colorado, and that's in Mexico. Um you get to see the installation. Uh, and you see on on the right, you see the filter operating, the scrapers discharging the cakes, and it's producing 10 or 20 times as much as anything on the plant there. So that was uh very interesting. Okay. Oh, here here actually, here's a lot of I see the scraper now.

Roopinder 29:52

Yes. Okay, that's good to see that.

Steve Benesi 29:57

And the characteristics of the magnetite we put in because it's so fine. Uh in this in this case, it's uh 84% passing 400 mesh, which is unusually fine. Blaine is is surface area per cubic centimeter, and so it has a very high blane. These are terms that are used in minerals. Okay. I'll keep going here, and this is day. We certainly don't need to go through all this data, uh, it but it shows the RPM, the vacuum, and the different production rates uh of a very difficult material. Uh and uh we were all we were too efficient uh in some cases. We had because we couldn't get our results back, uh we ended up taking a lot more water out of the solids than than they wanted. But then when we adjusted, of course, the production went way up. Okay, and here's the moisture range, it gives you a moisture range. The filters, the existing filters that they had there were getting above 10% moisture, well above 10% moisture. And uh, and that's the masolids. And we started out getting the moisture too low, which no one had ever experienced before, and we finally brought it up to what their goal, their goal was 9.5 percent. And so when we brought it up, of course, the production went way, way up. Okay, so here's here's the gang at um Pena, Colorado.

Roopinder 31:41

Uh-huh. Those your employees?

Steve Benesi 31:43

Yes, yeah, that's uh one, two, three. There's three of us there, and then there's the the client and the client, and then some engineers uh from Arcelor, Arcelor Metal, and uh a couple other places, and they had flown all the way from Canada uh to come watch the installation, quite common too. And so the key takeaways, slurry, fine magnetite, target moisture, easily maintained, and target moisture, it's just it's just the efficiency and bringing the moisture down to the desired level. Uh, and so that's a target moisture. Throughput range was several times as high as what existed, and then very low power consumption, and uh they're they're continuing with us, so that's those are the takeaways. And um UVF reduces the carbon dioxide, the emissions chemicals are not needed. You save up to 75 percent in any compressed air power consumption, and I see there's an error here. Save up to 40 percent vacuum pump system, it's a lot more, you're saving a lot more uh than that. And of course, the study is 40 capex opex reduction. Uh, and again, you're saving a lot more than that. I think that's big numbers, but they're real numbers. There's well over 10, there might be 15 or even 18 patents on this new equipment.

Patents Without Losing Your Shirt

Steve Benesi 33:32

And um, here's if you know what tailings are, um here I'll do I'll do a tailings. Let's see if we can do a tailings. Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. Yeah, this those that's those are filtered solids, and those are tailing solids. Uh uh, you just won't see that any place.

Roopinder 33:54

I did want to ask you about all your patents because a lot of our audience are design engineers and they're often curious and want to know about how difficult that is.

Steve Benesi 34:05

There's there's some procedures you can go to, especially if they're new patent patentees. Uh you can be begin with a provisional patent application.

unknown 34:17

Okay.

Steve Benesi 34:17

And that's that's a short version. It doesn't get published, uh, and you're only allowed, I've forgotten what whether it's 12 months or 18 months to 12 months or 18 months to uh file what you call a utility application, a full professional application. Okay. And when you file, generally the my patent attorneys always file with what you call the EPO European Patent Office and the PCT patent cooperation treaty. And when you file with them, you brace yourself because uh in both cases they publish your patent and allow, I think it's for 18 months. I'm not this might don't keep me to this exact time, but they publish your patent for a considerable amount of time, seeing if anybody is going to raise a claim or contest the patent. That's part of the patent process today. Okay, and then you'll you'll you'll clear, you'll gradually it'll be rejected. Most patents are rejected, to be frank with you.

Roopinder 35:35

What's your success rate?

Steve Benesi 35:37

Well, I got 100%, but that's it, it's been that doesn't mean 100%. The first go-around, it may be fully rejected, and then you get a little letter from the patent examiner saying, we might consider this or this this kind of thing, and then you refile. So what when you begin, you need to prepare for some of the responses that we get from the patent examiner. But uh over time, over time, I guess I have a hundred percent rate because you go after them and you'll get continuation, you have to what write office responses, uh and those are for the bigger, the um PCT, patent cooperation uh treaty and UTO. Then, as soon as it's allowed, then it goes into the national phase, and then you actually are starting to get patents in the USA, it's placed in the USA, it's placed in Brazil, it's placed in Chile, it's placed in Germany, it's placed in Japan. And each of these national phase, you you have someone you have patent folks in each nation. And I would have thought you filed once for the EU, but that's not true, huh? Oh gosh, no, gosh, no. Uh it it's you you uh EPU covers or or excuse me, the EPO, uh European Patent Office, uh covers uh some of the industrial, a lot of the industrial countries, and then you have to designate which countries that you that you want to uh apply. And I just received uh allowance from Australia, uh just sitting around here somewhere.

Roopinder 37:32

Okay. Now you you do it with a lawyer. Is it is that would you recommend that or is is it ever a case for an individual?

Steve Benesi 37:42

Yes, definitely get counsel. Uh you might if you don't have any money, if you don't, if you don't have any money, you want to start a patent. Uh you would want to write a provisional and you'd want to have it witnessed and understood. In other words, you're gonna you're gonna have you're gonna have a signature and you'll have a signature of another person who witnesses and understands. Uh you can do that, and it's maybe you can get by without an attorney, at least through the provision.

Roopinder 38:16

Okay, okay. And a provision lasts that you said a year or 18 months?

Steve Benesi 38:21

It's either a year or 18 months, and then and then you go right to the full utility patent. And I definitely recommend a lawyer for the utility patents. They're complex.

Roopinder 38:33

Is this also it sounds time consuming? Is it also expensive?

Steve Benesi 38:38

Yes. The attorneys told me years ago, you know, you're you're reaching a point where you're paying uh a quarter million dollars a year in uh re- maintaining the patents, and it's the truth. That's that's what happens. Uh, we might even be over that. I don't know.

Roopinder 38:56

Uh okay, so it's you shouldn't waste it on every idle idea you have. You should save it for something that's commercially viable or potentially commercial viable.

Steve Benesi 39:06

Yes, yes. On on hindsight, I might have done some more things differently. Confidentiality agreements, solid confidentiality agreements uh keep you going if you have the confidentiality agreements until you file the patent. And you can live with confidentiality agreements for a long time without having to file.

Roopinder 39:29

Tell me

Patent Count And Closing Toast

Roopinder 39:30

the full number again, have we or have you lost count, the number of patents you have?

Steve Benesi 39:34

I'm gonna say between 35 and 40 patents. That's impressive, Steve. You'll you'll have to walk, you'll have to walk 40 feet and come to my office and take a look at the walls.

Roopinder 39:51

You're you're quite the inventor.

unknown 39:52

Yes.

Roopinder 39:53

Of course, I'm very old too. But it's been great. Thank you so much for joining me and uh agreeing to be on the show.

Steve Benesi 40:00

Thank you, Roopinder, for inviting me. This it's been great. Thanks very much.

Roopinder 40:04

Appreciate it. All right, have a good rest of the day. Bye-bye. And that concludes this episode of the Masters of Technology Happy Hour. I hope you enjoyed the chat and joined me as we talk to some of the most interesting people in the design and engineering software community.