I have always thought that a PDF file bars the reader from copying or changing the content of the PDF document. I learned differently at the recent Legal Tech conference.
For example, ScanSoft PDF Converter Professional claims that it lets members of a law department convert PDF files into fully-formatted Word, Excel and WordPerfect documents. This capability is explained in a handout from Nuance Communications (Burlington, MA). So, to illustrate the benefit of PDF conversion, if a law department receives documents in PDF format from a law firm, it can convert those documents to its word processing format and use them.
Also at the recent LegalTech I ran across material from Bluebeam® PDF Revu by Bluebeam Software (Pasadena, CA). That software makes it easy to convert Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to any of 10 formats, including PDF, TIFF, JPEG, BMP, GIF, PSD, PNG, EMF, WMF and PCL (impressively technical, aren’t I!). Bluebeam® PDF Revu lets you insert, reorder, delete and extract PDF pages were combined or assemble several PDF files into one document. It also allows you to annotate and bookmark PDF documents as well as easily create hyperlinks.