When Jose Gutman and his fellow founding members opened their intellectual property legal practice in Boca Raton in 1999, little did they know the region would become a hub of technological innovation that would so keenly require the services they provide.

Today, Fleit Gibbons Gutman Bongini & Bianco PLLC,  is a leading law firm focused exclusively on intellectual property. Practice areas include patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets in the areas of computer / Internet, electronic concerns, biomedical, chemistry, mechanical, software, semiconductors, telecommunications, nanotechnology and bioinformatics.

“This is like a mini-Silicon Valley,” the firm founder and Managing Member says of Boca Raton’s robust and growing tech community.

Actually, it should be no surprise that founding members and managing members Marty Fleit, Jon Gibbons, Jose Gutman, Steve Bongini and Paul Bianco have found success here. Most attorneys in the firm have one or more degrees in engineering or science; and are on the US patent bar, which is required to work as patent attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

For his part, Gutman formerly was an in-house design engineer for wireless communications with Motorola in Boynton Beach. While in that position, his teams invented such products as wireless applications now common among consumer devices, and even the “electronic wallet” concept now coming into use.

“I was part of Motorola during the go-go years in the late ‘80s and ‘90s,” he says. “Some patents being disputed with Apple and Google are things from way back then.”

Seeing the key relationship between engineering and law, he returned to school to earn his law degree from the University of Miami School of Law in under four years – while still working full time. He already held an M.S. Degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, and dual B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics, and in Marketing and Business Administration, from Florida State University.

With the combination of engineering and legal expertise, he became an in-house attorney helping with obtaining patents and licensing at Motorola. At one point, he was president of the Patent Law Association of South Florida.
In time, Gutman – a Cuban native raised in Miami – left Motorola to join the patent department with law firm Gunster.

By 1999, he and his fellow founding members opened their shop, soon relocating to Danburg Properties of Boca Raton’s One Boca Commerce Center.

Gutman and his wife Amy, a local artist, have two adult sons and have lived in Boca Raton for 14 years and Palm Beach County for double that. For his part, Gutman is optimistic on the vital role his firm is playing amid South Florida’s innovative and growing tech marketplace – and his clients’ awareness of IP’s growing importance.

“Intellectual property,” he says, “is actually worth more than the hard assets in a company.”