Do we need an ISBN at Kindle Direct Publishing?

This self-publishing thing is getting a little too interesting.  I was in one of my favorite groups at LinkedIn - the one that talks about nothing but publishing ebooks, that sort of thing, when someone asked a question that I found right up my alley.  He wanted to know if he needed an ISBN using Kindle Direct Publishing.  I didn't think you needed one but I did have a question about imprints.  You know - when you don't want KDP to be in the publisher's slot and you want to come up with your own publisher's name? 

So, I asked and here were two responses which really helped:

"ISBN ownership classically was a way of tracking who the publisher of a work was. That's no longer the case, and has never had any legal standing. Your publishing company gets listed regardless whether you have an ISBN or not, for ebooks at all major retailers. Just enter your company name under "publisher" when filling out the book form. For *Createspace* books, if you opt to use their free ISBN, Createspace gets listed as published. But that's print, and it's different; in general, I consider paying the $10 for a Createspace-assigned ISBN (which associates my publishing company with our books) to be the minimum solution. I don't recommend free ISBNs for print.

 

"Dorothy, electronic-only (eBook) Amazon Kindle does not use ISBNs. If you already have one they accept it when you upload the book to their site. Whatever name you enter into the "Publisher" field...is the publisher. This does not change. For print books, Kevin covered the ISBN question in his "Createspace" post."

 

I'm wondering if when you have an ebook, and then you go to  paperback, that's when the ISBN thing applies?