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Cast Away

When Bob Bentivegna was forced to take an early retirement from the Jersey City Fire Department, he didn’t go without a fight. Bob was a 51-year-old local boxing champion who’d won in the first round against both the New York City Fire Department and Police Department, and took three rounds that ended in a decision against the Newark Fire Department. You don’t mess with Bob.

Bob may be tough, but his feet were not. Twenty-three years of getting in and out of fireman boots with stiff bunker pants on took their toll. His feet were deteriorating. The doctors took X-rays, MRIs, and bone scans, found a stress fracture in his ankle, and told him he couldn’t go back to work. No more jumping off the rig for this guy. He was also sentenced to wear a rigid cast for six weeks.

For most people, this would be a major inconvenience; for Bob it was intolerable. “The problem was that I had no relationship with crutches. I could use them, but I just couldn’t accept them… . I cut them up and threw them in the garbage, thinking, ‘I can’t do this; there’s got to be a better way.’”

It was a warm Indian summer night and, already restless, Bob couldn’t sleep. Out of desperation, he crawled backwards down the stairs to his basement in the middle of the night to make something to help him get around on the cast. Looking around the basement for parts, he took apart the headrest from a sit-up bar and removed its oblong cushion. He then cut two bungee cords in half and screwed them to the plastic bottom of the headrest. Next was determining how to anchor the cords.

Looking around again, he saw the rigid brown drive belt from a vacuum cleaner and slipped it over the toe of his cast. He rolled the drive belt up over his ankle and attached it to the bungee cords. It worked. The Cast Skate was Bob’s ticket to freedom for the next six weeks. He could pivot off his bad foot and lean on his good leg. The Cast Skate was easy to put on and take off. When Bob went to bed, he just kicked off the four cords, keeping the cushion on the bottom of his cast.

Six weeks later, when Bob got the cast off, he showed his Cast Skate to his orthopedic surgeon. The doctor examined Bob’s invention and liked it. A patent search revealed that no one else had a patent on this idea. So that meant Bob’s feat wouldn’t step on anyone’s toes. In fact, its construction was so unique that he was able to get a utility patent, not just a design patent, and his patent was granted on the first application. In the world of patents, that’s a big deal.

Next, Bob’s invention needed some attention, which is difficult for a single inventor to get. So he went to the Yankee Invention Expo in Connecticut. A few months later, he received a couple of letters from interested manufacturers. “My wife and I were doing backflips. But we still have to sit back and be patient. Nobody hurries in this business. They just don’t. It took a year and a half to get my patent and that’s like overnight. No one has a sense of urgency about my product, except for me.”

Today, Bob gets promo material in the mail and always responds to licensing inquiries. But he knows to be suspicious of anyone who asks for money up front. “Some of these people want $6,000, plus 20 percent of the proceeds, and have you sign over your patent for the full twenty years. I’m not comfortable with that.”

Bob has already spent about $6,000 on his invention, most of that on his legal fees. “It’s not wise for someone in my position to dish out thousands of dollars. The product needs to speak for itself.”

Bob has read an armload of books on the invention and patent process. He doesn’t skate around the fact that the Cast Skate is still in its early stages. “One of my books says, ‘Even an overnight success takes a long time.’ If you’re an independent inventor, you have a long road ahead of you.”

And Bob and his Cast Skate are heading down that road one step at a time.