This is indeed the point at which push comes to shove. Now that they’ve worked so hard on having a standard, what are IDPF members prepared to do to protect and promote that standard?

Count me in on full agreement that an unenforced standard is no standard at all. The question, of course is, what next with ePub?

It is reasonable for IDPF to go to its deeper-pocketed members — especially those in the chain directly competing with Amazon — to establish a fund to pay for the setup and policing of the trademarks. If handled properly, such a fund could be self-sustaining through nominal licensing fees. Eventually the fund could be paid back to its original backers.

In any case, I note that there are many who feel that the ePub standard is insufficient for its needs, and they may be right. But that’s not a reason to impede protecting what already exists. Most who has used USB or Blu-ray knows that those “standards” have gone through multiple versions, without eroding public use or respect for those formats and protocols.

And as for Joe’s unfortunate admission of ignorance… that’s more deserving of pity than ridicule.

We are in agreement.
That s what I meant about “teeth”.
CDs and DVD has a Logo program. And they have trademarks. But what matters is that if somebody comes out with an incompatible mutation (and it *has* happened–the music studios have tried for years to create unrippable CDs that would not play on PCs) they have to deal with the Lawyers from Sony and Philips and the very deep-pocketed licensing body.
They have the will and the means t inflict serious pain on transgressors.

With ePub the danger isn’t a hypothetical ePub-plus (Google search never heard of it before this article) embrace-and-extend attack from the outside but rather the buggaboo of committee standards: interpretation. And the ability of a savvy, unscrupulous “supporter” to hijack the standard by creating a defacto “interpretation standard” based on availability and market share not on official standards. In fact, given the inevitable gaps in any committe-based standard, they can cite full spec-compliance while at the same time advancing their own flavor at the expense of interoperability.
This is not paranoia; this is happening right now all over in the IT industry. Everybody preaches interoperability. On *their* terms. Examples abound all over because nobody has the absolute power to say what the standard means. Words are cheap. Deeds cost money. And in the marketplace paper specs are just a marketting gimmick; what matters is the implementation with the market share.
Standards hijacking is common.
And very very profitable.
And it is happening to ePub right now. Just look at the changelogs of Calibre and other ePub tools.
“Tweaked XXX to be compatible with yyy.”

Without an enforcer with teeth, talk of Logo programs and trademark suits are just that.
Talk.

The way it works is that if you want to use the trademarks you have to sign a license agreement that includes specific standards that you have to meet. If you don’t meet them then the IDPF could pull the marks. This is a very common way for companies to ensure that others who use their marks comply with their quality standards.

Anyone else could be sued for trademark infringement or failure to comply with the license agreement. Part of the suit would be to get an injunction to prevent them from using either trademark.

Unfortunately, the IDPF really consists of one guy and a bunch of part timers and so I doubt they would have the resources to do any of the above. It would take manpower to set the standards and to constantly review all the works out there that were using the licensed logo – so I really don’t expect anything much will come of this.

But the important point is that it is eminently doable, and even commonplace.