DOCBOOK-APPS: Licensing for producing PDFs?

[Dan York <dyork@e-smith.com>]

Question for you all.  Many of you probably know of the current situation
where the U.S. FBI has arrested Dmitry Sklyarov for his company's role
in creating software that converts files in Adobe's eBook format to PDF:

  http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Sklyarov/20010717_eff_sklyarov_pr.html
  http://www.boycottadobe.com/
  http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010719_eff_sklyarov_alert.html

The resulting publicity has caused one of our partners to ask about any legal
issues around generating PDF files from DocBook using open source tools. 
I honestly did not know what to tell him.  As far as I know, Adobe is
promoting PDF as a "free" and "open" standard.  Their page on PDF is vague on
any licensing issues:

  http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/adobepdf.html

Their pages on anti-piracy:

  http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/antipiracy/main.html

have one link to a (appropriately) PDF on "Piracy and Adobe PDF":

  http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/antipiracy/main.html

But it seems to apply to *their* tools such as Acrobat 4.0 and Distiller.
A Google search turned up nothing that really helped.

So, my question for you is this - *are* there licensing issues with
creating PDF files?  If so, is that something handled by the creator
of the program that can generate PDFs?  Or is PDF truly an open format
that anyone can create?

Thanks in advance,
Dan

-- 
Dan York, Director of Training        dyork@e-smith.com
Ph: +1-613-751-4401  Mobile: +1-613-263-4312 Fax: +1-613-564-7739 
e-smith, inc. 150 Metcalfe St., Suite 1500, Ottawa,ON K2P 1P1 Canada
http://www.e-smith.com/            open source, open mind