PDF format (was: Re: BitKeeper licence critic)

Florian Weimer Weimer at CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
Sun Mar 17 09:34:53 UTC 2002


Laurent Guerby <guerby at acm.org> writes:

> PS: do you have any URL about Adobe's claims?

The following is an excerpt from the PDF specification, version 1.3,
dated 1999-03-11.

AFAIK, a U.S. court ruled that if you can interface a software package
in just one way which always leads to the same code, this code cannot
be copyrighted, so it is a bit questionable if the Adobe approach
works at all.

| 1.7    Copyright permission to use PDF
| 
| The general idea of utilizing an interchange format for final-form
| documents is in the public domain. Anyone is free to devise his or her
| own set of unique commands and data structures that define an
| interchange format for final-form documents.  Adobe owns the copyright
| in the data structures, operators, and the written specification for
| the particular interchange format called the Portable Document
| Format. These elements may not be copied without Adobe's permission.
| 
| Adobe will enforce its copyright. Adobe's intention is to maintain the
| integrity of the Portable Document Format as a standard. This enables
| the public to distinguish between the Portable Document Format and
| other interchange formats for final- form documents.
| 
| However, Adobe desires to promote the use of the Portable Document
| Format for information interchange among diverse products and
| applications. Accordingly, Adobe gives copyright permission to anyone
| to:
| 
| 
|    · Prepare files in which the file content conforms to the Portable
|      Document Format.
| 
|    · Write drivers and applications that produce output represented in
|      the Portable Document Format.
| 
|    · Write software that accepts input in the form of the Portable
|      Document Format and displays the results, prints the results, or
|      otherwise interprets a file represented in the Portable Document
|      Format.
| 
|    · Copy Adobe's copyrighted list of operators and data structures,
|      as well as the PDF sample code and PostScript language Function
|      definitions in the written specification, to the extent
|      necessary to use the Portable Document Format for the above
|      purposes.
| 
| The only condition on such copyright permission is that anyone who
| uses the copyrighted list of operators and data structures in this way
| must include an appropriate copyright notice.
| 
| This limited right to use the copyrighted list of operators and data
| structures does not include the right to copy the Portable Document
| Format Reference Manual, other copyrighted material from Adobe, or the
| software in any of Adobe's products which use the Portable Document
| Format, in whole or in part, nor does it include the right to use any
| Adobe patents.

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  Weimer at CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
University of Stuttgart           http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/
RUS-CERT                          +49-711-685-5973/fax +49-711-685-5898



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