Request for Contributors to Co-Sign IDPF EPUB 3.1 Submission to W3C

As one element of finalizing the planned combination of IDPF with W3C, IDPF anticipates submitting EPUB 3.1 to W3C as a W3C Member Submission. IDPF and W3C would like all organizations that contributed to the development of EPUB specifications to co-sign IDPF's member submission. This will facilitate the transfer of this important intellectual property and memorialize your organization's contributions to a critical open standard. The goal is to facilitate future work on major revisions to EPUB, as well as the ability to potentially reuse features in EPUB in other Web specifications, on a royalty-free (RF) basis according to the W3C Patent Policy, even though originally developed under IDPF's policies which require only RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing of essential patents. Our community has been very lucky that EPUB has nevertheless always been free to use and implement, and we would like to take the opportunity of the combination with W3C to ensure that EPUB remains open and set the stage for future work at W3C to deliver maximum compatibility with EPUB 3.

An authorization, which includes a draft of the cover for the prospective submission, is located at http://idpf.org/sites/default/files/EPUB_3_1_authorization_with_cover.pdf

This request for co-signers is applicable to all current and former IDPF member organizations that contributed to any version of EPUB (including contributions to extension specifications that were subsequently incorporated into EPUB). Please note that, as provided in the authorization, the prospective submission will take place if and only if the combination of IDPF with W3C is finalized as planned. As well, please note that signing does not imply any endorsement of, or commitment to implement, EPUB 3.1: it is strictly about the IP transfer, and this is being done based on EPUB 3.1 only because it's the latest version of the EPUB specification. 

If your organization contributed to the development of EPUB specifications, please sign the submission authorization at your earliest convenience and email a scan of the signed authorization to [email protected] (or remit by physical mail to IDPF, 113 Cherry St. Ste 70-719 Seattle, WA 98110 USA).