500 Limit

What is the ultimate purpose of the forms? Specifically, will the clients of the Realtors return the filled-in form to the Realtor?

My initial impression is this scenario would likely be a violation of the Acrobat license agreement, but I am not a lawyer and you should not take this as legal opinion or advice. I can tell you how I would personally handle this situation, however.

As a consultant who specialized in PDF forms, I will never sell or otherwise provide to a client a document that I have Reader-enabled. If a client of mine needs an enabled form, they must do it themselves by purchasing a copy of Acrobat or using an enabling service such as the one Form Router provides. I inform clients that if they distribute a form that they have enabled with Acrobat to more than 500 recipients, they are limited to using information form no more than 500 returned forms, including hard copies.

So, you can charge for your forms design/creation services, but make each individual realtor enable the documents and be responsible for being in compliance. Acrobat 9 Standard can apply certain forms and commenting usage rights, but cannot apply digital signature usage rights, so consider recommending it as a less expensive alternative to Acrobat Pro.

Regarding " a rule from Adobe", what you see in the Acrobat License Agreement is what you get. It is just a matter of how it is interpreted. Legal analysis and advice should come from your attorney, not someone else's.

George

The Ultimate Goal of the forms are to be use as Sales Contracts. REALTORS would be filling out the forms and sending them to Clients, Clients would then read over the information, print them out, and Sign them (ink and pen). The same REALTORS would use the same form over and over again, but of course the information being filled by the REALTOR will change from deal to deal.

I just have a hard time understanding if I have a form and I myself fill it out more than 500 times then I am violating the agreement.

I understand the license agreement as I could not distribute the form to more than 500 people to obtain information, but the same 500 people if they wanted, ,could use the form over and over again.

The question is will the clients return the filled and signed form back to the realtor?

That's not necessarily the case. The person to whom the license applies (the licensee) would be in violation if he distributed a form to more than 500 people, collected more than 500 returned forms, and used information from more than 500 of the returned forms.

The license says specifically that you can deploy an enabled form to more than 500 recipients. What matters is what the licensee does with the filled-in forms that have been returned (to the licensee). For example, if Acme Realty is the licensee, then that realty could use information from no more than 500 instances if the form was deployed to more than 500 people.

If the licensee deploys a form to more than 500 recipients but never receives any returned forms, no problem. But this doesn't mean that I can use Acrobat to enable a form, sell it to someone, and not worry about it since I am not the one collecting the returned forms.

George

Hi grandprix,

In your case "as you state it" you should be OK. Where you would not be OK is if you put this form on the web and had a general population of customers filling out and saving the form then sending it to your group of 146 sale people. In that case this would not be a discrete group anymore using the form. In other words, if this enabled form lives only on the machines of these 146 people and is used (filled/saved) only by those 146 people, then they can use the form as many times as they like without breaking the EULA.

This is, and probably will continue to be, a very confusing issue. I am not a legal professional and the only people who can provide a "definitive" legal answer would be Adobe Legal themselves, so my answer above is how I read the EULA and how I understood it when explained to me by Adobe employees.

Hope this helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.windjack.com
www.pdfscripting.com

Thank you Dimitri, That is what I was looking for. Though I appreciate your help too George!

The Forms will be hosted on our secure MLS system and only those 146 REALTORS will have access. Those 146 REALTORS will be re-using these forms for different sales transactions.

I still think you're on shaky ground. The problem is not the 146 realtors using the form, it is all of their clients who will be using the form. When you read the license agreement, you will see how the term "deploy" is defined:

It sounds like the number of recipients is not limited to 146, but rather will far exceed 500. That seems to be the whole purpose for making the form available. The important point that you haven't responded to yet is whether the realtor's clients will be returning the forms to the realtors. I don't care if you respond here, but it needs to be something you consider.

FWIW, here is the model I would use:

Distribute the form that has not been Reader-enabled on the MLS web site. The individual Realtors can download it and Reader-enable it themselves if they like. The individual Realtor is then responsible for complying with the Acrobat license agreement. Otherwise, have the Board of Realtors attorney approve the plan.

George

George,

The REALTORS will fill out the forms (sales contract), they will print the forms out, and the client will read the forms and sign them. The client is not filling out the form, all they are doing is signing and initialing.

Ah, then I would agree with Dimitri.

You should consider setting up the form so that the fields are set to read-only before the realtor sends the form to the client. I would also do a test with a sample document so that the realtors understand how Reader behaves when an enabled form is loaded by Reader.

George