Distributing Savable Forms with Acrobat pro - License Restrictions

Hi dougdew99,

Legalese is confusing, isn't it? I am not a lawyer, nor do I work for Adobe, nor can I speak on their behalf regarding legal matters. It is better to get an answer from an official Adobe person to be safe. But, since that may not happen here I'll tell you my understanding of this paragraph below taken directly from the Acrobat 8 EULA-

14.13.3 For any unique Extended Document, you may only either (a) Deploy such Extended Document to an unlimited number of unique recipients but shall not extract information from more than five hundred (500) unique instances of such Extended Document or any hardcopy representation of such Extended Document containing filled form fields; or (b) Deploy such Extended Document to no more than five hundred (500) unique recipients without limits on the number of times you may extract information from such Extended Document returned to you filled-in by such Recipients. Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, obtaining additional licenses to use Acrobat Professional shall not increase the foregoing limits (that is, the foregoing limits are the aggregate total limits regardless of how many additional licenses to use Acrobat Professional you may have obtained)."

Me again. I see this two ways-

1.You can be an individual who sends an Extended Rights form to any number of people at large, but can only collect (extract) the information from a total of 500 instances of that form. An example would be a registration form you send to a group of say 750 people, but you only expect 300 to actually register so you are within the limits when you get the data back.

2. You have a group of sales people that you want to use an Extended Rights PDF form for a particualr business purpose. In this case, up to 500 sales people may use the form over and over (unlimited times) for that business purpose but no more than 500 sales people can use the form- if you hire salesperson 501 and they use the form you will be outside the limits of the EULA.

OK- that is my stab at explaining that- again this is not an official legal Adobe response. You will need to contact them directly for that.

Hope this helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.windjack.com

Dimitri
Thanks for your response...

In my case, I do not want or expect anyone to return a completed form to me... I am not using the form to collect information at all. I am supply the form for the recipient's one time use.

This is why I think the license permits me to do this.

I do not want to act outside the terms of the license, but I do not know how to find out from Adobe if my interpretation is correct. Do they have a service which answers questions like this?

Doug

Wondering if anyone knows how to find out from Adobe what the licensing position is about this issue?

Do you know how many times recipients of your contract template will save this form with data in it? How many people will use the contract template?

Also, if you're selling the form, have you made your client aware that there are license restrictions associated with a Reader-enabled form? You could put an alert in the form as a reminder.

Lori

The license sayds "Deploy such Extended Document to an unlimited number of unique recipients but shall not extract information from more than five hundred (500) unique instances of such Extended Document or any hardcopy representation of such Extended Document containing filled form fields"

In what circumstances does "Deploy such Extended Document to an unlimited number of unique recipients" apply? All the answers on the forum seem to say it never applies. My clients will be contractually bound not to pass on the form to third parties or use the form to gather information. (for which it would be useless anyway).

I do hope someone from Adobe can clarify this issue because I cannot act in contravention to the license agreement, but I do want to use my Adobe software to meet my business needs...

This would apply, for example, if you were to post such a PDF form online where any number of folks could download and use it.

Since you are only distributing the file to one user, and you're not subsequently extracting any data, you're fine. Even if you were planning on extracting the data, you'd be fine. The language seems clear to me.

George

George
Thanks... I interpret the license the same way as you... however there are posts on this and other forums which say the limit is 500 whether you are gathering information or not... this is why I raised the question... I wonder if someone from Adobe can confirm that our interpretation is correct...

Doug

Hi Doug,

I'm not aware of anyone from Adobe Legal posting in these forums. Even if an Adobe employee were to tell you something here, I bet it would not hold up in a courtroom if it came to that. Here is the phone number for the Adobe legal department if you must have an offcial response giving you the OK for your workflow with PDF forms.
Adobe's Legal Department: 408-537-4060

Hope this helps,

Dimitri
WindJack Solutions
www.windjack.com