The referenced notice, together with other legalese, is available at
<
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/legalnotices.jsp>. Although it
doesn't specifically forbid sub-licensing, it does say "The above
licenses are limited to only those rights required to implement the
Specification and no others. That is to say, Adobe grants only those
rights in the above patent(s) necessarily practiced to implement the
Specification, and does not grant any rights not required to implement
the Specification."
The Adobe language seems to be saying exactly the same thing as the MS
language. I think one must conclude that either .doc and .pdf are both
open formats or they are both closed.
(text/plain)