All,
I have had a productive meeting with the ISTO about our options WRT self-certification.
Several ISTO program organizations already provide certification or self-certification, so the PWG definitely can develop and run a certification program for IPP Everywhere. Some examples:
App Quality Alliance (AQuA): Quality App directory:
http://www.appqualityalliance.org/testing-programmes
VoiceXML Forum: Platform self-certification
http://www.voicexml.org/certification
Wireless Power Consortium: "Qi" certification by independent test labs
http://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/developers/test-and-certification-services.html
For a self-certification program:
1. The ISTO would register the mark (or marks) for the PWG and be the legal entity that holds the mark(s) unless we choose another - it just can't be the PWG because we are part of the ISTO.
2. The certification program needs to include a legal agreement governing the rights to use the mark(s), consequences for using the marks for non-certified products, and a disclaimer of responsibility for lost profits, etc. The ISTO has example agreements and contracts with an outside legal counsel (expect to see those examples soon)
3. To be legally binding, the self-certification results need to be submitted along with the legal agreement (#2) - basically each model/series of product being certified needs to be approved (to use the marks in #1) separately.
- The results can be submitted to the PWG, ISTO, or a third-party of our choosing
- There is no requirement to post the results to the membership, although it is customary to maintain a web page with a list of approved models/series
4. We should decide whether to do "market surveillance" to determine whether vendors are using the mark(s) (#1) for unapproved products. There are third-party companies that provide such services, but most ISTO programs do not do this.
- ISTO's legal counsel can be used to go after companies that use the mark(s) without approval.
- Some ISTO programs do random auditing of the self-certification results to prevent "cheating".
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Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair
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