Leadership

Professional engineer with extensive experience in the private and public sectors.

James D. Bennett, II is a registered professional engineer and registered patent agent with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Prairie View A&M University and a Master of Science Degree in Petroleum Engineering from Tulane University.

James’ background consists of over 30 years of engineering, patent law, and business development experience.  For 14 of those years, James committed over 12 years with Amoco Production Company and BP Exploration (Alaska), Inc. in the operations facet as a Petroleum Engineer addressing technical issues concerning oil and gas well, top-side facilities’ and petroleum reservoir performance.  In addition to those years of engineering experience, James spent 4 years as a business development analyst with BP Exploration (Alaska), Inc. managing federal and state property tax initiatives and activities for well over $7 billion of taxable property and tax incentives. 

Over 7 years were spent in the Tax Audit/Field Examination Branch as an Engineer Revenue Agent with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).  At the IRS, James performed valuations of intellectual property assets, the examination of petroleum industry tax matters, valuation of various tangible and intangible assets, was an in-house technical consultant for revenue agents and was also trained as an expert witness for the IRS. He acquired a thorough understanding of IRS audit technique and policy and procedure relating to petroleum and other industry tax matters as they apply to individuals and large and complex corporations.  He also managed and coordinated “special emphasis” programs and managed a 10 member, multi-disciplined engineer group.   

For 5 years James worked for Deloitte & Touche, LLP, a Big Four accounting firm. During his tenure, he served as Project Manager, organized and served as the National Chair of Engineer Technical Liaisons Committee and performed as a technical expert for the Quality Assurance and Advisory Services group for the firm’s National R&D practice.   He developed the firm’s National R&D practice’s best practices for interview techniques and technical memorandum content deciphered from engineers, scientists, patents, patent applications, invention disclosure evaluations, and other intellectual property to establish the validity of novel concepts.

Currently, he provides expert witness testimony services, patent prosecution, technology licensing, IP portfolio management and R&D analysis services for accounting firms, law firms, the individual inventor, universities and small to mid-size businesses.