Mike Lee is a product engineer in the Netherlands.
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If we’re going to be successful in defending our industry from extortionists, we need to focus on extortion. If we spend our energy bickering with each other over our personal agendas, we will fail.
Apple is not a patent troll. Neither is Microsoft. Neither is PixFusion. Patent trolls, by definition, produce nothing but lawsuits. Using the legalized monopoly power of a patent against competitors is how the system is designed to work. Whether that system should exist at all is a separate issue. Whether this company or that company is being a dick is a separate issue.
We are going after one type of behavior: obtaining patents for the sole purpose of extracting licensing fees. That this is a burden to all technologists is something we should all be able to agree on, and is therefore something that we should all be able to work together to change.
If we start equating Apple to Intellectual Ventures, or if we try to eliminate software patents entirely, we are going to find ourselves up against the platform vendors, and we are going to lose. Save those battles for another day.
Today, as I began carefully sifting through the emotional minefield of my inbox, I got this:
Clearly the person tasked with sending this email was so distraught over the news that they accidentally typed the thing foremost on their mind into the subject field and forgot to fill in the other fields before, overcome with grief, they hit send.
I understand completely.
Inevitable Update
Today I received the inevitable follow-up to what was obviously someone’s goof.
These guys also reached out to me personally to let me know how incredibly sick they were at their mistake. The good news is, it was just an honest-to-goodness error and not something more sinister. This is why we always assume positive intent.
The rain started in Amsterdam early, early this morning. The city seems to shake and groan as water pours down from above in sheets. This is not happy rain. This is not the kind of warm rain you take a romantic and fatalistic walk through. It’s the kind of rain you must simply accept, washing over your entire life, whose only promise is that this too must pass.
Nobody can claim to be surprised by this weather, after enjoying so many days of glorious sunshine. Over the weekend every street cafe was open, every boat was on the canal. We all knew, all told each other, that the sun wouldn’t last, that the rain would come. We told ourselves that, steeled ourselves against the coming winter.
There are places that deny the weather, where it rains all the time, but nobody ever carries an umbrella. In this place, people are always aware of the weather, always aware that though the sun may shine, rain is always just over the horizon. Nobody considers this morbid, a dour pessimism that sours the smell of sunlight.
Rather, it is the memory of rain that drives us to soak up the sun every opportunity we get, the knowledge of it that drives us to try to stay dry. If we let the rain surprise us each time, or if we live in constant denial of it, we will never understand the weather, the atmosphere, or our place within it. We will simply be wet, and dry, and wet again.
If we prepare, if we are ever cognizant of the impermanence inherent in nature, we can be ready for the rain when it comes. You can keep your clothes warm and your hair in order. What it seems like you can never avoid, which perhaps we should learn to savor as being part of this planet, is the feeling of raindrops running down your face.
During panel discussions between App Makers and patent attorneysMichael McCoy (US) and Paul Reeskamp (NL), we discussed business structures to erect legal bulkheads to limit exposure to extortion or other threats. The construct we came up with is to have an Amsterdam- or offshore-based licensing company that owns the IP produced by the App Maker, and some number of operating companies that license and sell that IP in different markets.
The US accounts for approximately 25% of the app market and 100% of the extortion market. One advantage of living in Appsterdam is that you are generally out of reach of the US, unless you do business in the US. You can do business in the US while limiting your exposure by having your Dutch company deal with non-US marketing and sales, and a US company dealing exclusively with the US market.
One advantage of doing business in the US is the trivial formation of limited liability companies. That means you can have your US company spin off new US companies for each successful product. You can even have separate companies for every platform. The more you bifurcate your enterprise, the more you ensure that if one part falls under extortion, the rest is protected.
In its long-term role as the legal center for App Makers, the Appsterdam Legal Foundation is exploring ways to make setting up such a structure as painless as possible, even for people who are not citizens of the United States.
It is also possible to effectively eliminate exposure to the US by simply not servicing the US market at all, as some European companies have done. Even though the major platform providers are based in the US, non-US companies making non-US products for non-US markets are sufficiently jurisdictionally out of reach as to not be worth the bother.
Of course, if it’s all the same, you will probably find the US market too lucrative to ignore when the only risk is losing that market. Still, it may be a good idea for non-US companies to exclude the US market from early trials and launch. If and when the product becomes successful, it will be worth the effort to enter the US market.
Tune in tomorrow when we shall endeavor to create an App Maker’s Guide to Surviving Extortion.
Summer in the Netherlands rocks. Employee salaries include 13 months of pay, with the extra month cashing out at the same time as your vacation. Basically the Amsterdammers surrender the city to the tourists and go have adventures, coming back thinner, tanner, and more relaxed.
Just in time for festival season! September features a number of music, arts, technology, and general interest festivals all over the Netherlands—including the world’s greatest Pride. Appsterdam got into the action with our enormous App Dome at the Picnic festival.
The upshot is the entire country travels in August and parties in September. The Appsterdam work year starts in October, and what a year we have planned! Appsterdam 1: Summer of Appsterdam is drawing to a close. The coming weeks are going to be an amazing time as we gear up for the launch of Appsterdam 2: Appsterdam Overwinter.
We’re starting strong with the Appsterdam Legal Summit on October 3-4, as well you know. This is the chance for App Makers to talk to an international corps of friendly attorneys. We’ll solidify our understanding of the patent situation, devise strategies, and answer questions in person, and via a daily two-hour broadcast.
We’ll also be running our regularly scheduled events, which includes weekly Meeten en Drinken in Amsterdam, Delft, and Warsaw; our Weekly Wednesday Lunchtime Lecture series; and our twice-monthly Appsterdam Family Weekend get-togethers. We’ll also have our next Appsterdam Guru Session hands-on workshop, Android from Scratch, on October 15. We’ll have the next public app meeting, focusing on design, with Meet the Makers in Appsterdam Delft on October 26.
As always, there are plenty of other great events going on in the city, like the Node.js training session on October 4. I’ll be doing a speaking tour with the GOTO Conference, which lands in Appsterdam on October 13-14. Your next chance to start a company in a weekend comes with Startup Weekend Groningen November 4-6. If you’re working on Android in Appsterdam you don’t want to miss DroidconNL on November 22-23.
Finally, there are two events that are near and dear to my heart, not just because I’m speaking at both of them, but because together they form what I call the “Fishers of Men” stratagem. This is for the rare class of people who are ready to take the plunge, divest of their material possessions, and jump with both feet into a new career and a new life. These are the people who look at the dramatic moves I’ve made in my own career and say, “I want to be an App Maker, and I’m willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to make that happen. What do I do?”
Here’s what you do: sell, donate, or trash everything you own; buy a plane ticket to Amsterdam and a seat at the Big Nerd Ranch iOS Bootcamp on Oct 22-28, then be prepared to spend 7 intense days in your cocoon before emerging a beautifully trained butterfly, just in time to celebrate your metamorphosis at the Appsterdam 2 Launch Party Weekend featuring Museumnacht on November 4-6. You’ll meet people, find work, and start your new life.
On the less dramatic side of the pond, if you’re a European CS grad looking to be where the action is, a number of Dutch companies have teamed up to assemble an opportunity package that picks up half the tab for going in to the Big Nerd Ranch, and a job offer when you get out. If you’re in the select group eligible for this offer, it’s frankly hard to beat!
