Premium edition

For legal teams

At a glance

You are evaluating NextPDF for a legal or compliance review. This page collects what that review needs: which agreements govern, what is open source, where the IP and trademark boundaries sit, and what data the licence check processes. Every statement mirrors a canonical licensing or policy page and links to it. Where this summary and the binding documents differ, those documents govern. Nothing here is legal advice.

This guide covers both commercial editions - NextPDF Pro (nextpdf/pro) and NextPDF Enterprise (nextpdf/enterprise); see the feature matrix for per-edition availability. Both activate with a license envelope; a deployment without the matching entitlement does not load that edition’s premium classes. Compare editions and get a license.

What you’re buying

In thirty seconds: a purchase creates two separate agreements. Your purchase contract is with our Merchant of Record, the seller of record for the order. Your licence is granted by PATEON under the EULA — the NextPDF Commercial License Agreement (Version 3.0) — and your order. The docs link those terms and never restate them; see Buying and licensing.

What the licence covers is a proprietary software product on an open foundation. The core engine (nextpdf/core) is Apache License 2.0 open source. NextPDF Pro and NextPDF Enterprise are proprietary; their packages declare the SPDX identifier LicenseRef-NextPDF-Commercial. Each paid plan is an annual licence subscription; perpetual buyouts are available on request, and listed prices exclude tax — see Buying and licensing. The same editions ship through two delivery channels with identical licence rights but different runtime behaviour; the channel choice is where most legal questions land, and it is covered below.

The questions we hear most

Which agreements govern our use?

Two documents. The EULA — the NextPDF Commercial License Agreement (Version 3.0) and your Schedule — governs the software licence, granted by PATEON. The purchase itself is a contract with our Merchant of Record, which handles payment, tax, invoicing, and refunds; PATEON does not itself process card payments. See Buying and licensing and the legal index.

Do the commercial editions expose us to copyleft?

No copyleft attaches to the editions themselves. Pro and Enterprise are proprietary, and the core is Apache License 2.0 — permissive, not copyleft. One optional component is disclosed plainly: the Spectrum acceleration component is licensed LGPL-3.0-or-later, with a relink path for compliance. It is separate from the Apache-2.0 core and from the commercial editions. The full component map is in Product licensing.

How do the packages identify their licence in an SBOM?

By SPDX identifier, machine-readably. nextpdf/core declares "license": "Apache-2.0" and ships the full licence text. The paid packages declare "license": "LicenseRef-NextPDF-Commercial", and their source headers carry @copyright 2026 PATEON NETWORK TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED with a matching SPDX-License-Identifier. Your dependency-audit tooling can verify these identifiers directly; see Product licensing.

Who owns the IP, and what may we say about the brand?

The software and the brand are owned by PATEON NETWORK TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED. The “NextPDF” name and logo are its trademarks, and no code licence grants brand rights — the Apache License 2.0 excludes them explicitly (Apache-2.0 §6). Factual statements such as “built with NextPDF” are the acceptable nominative use. Branding a modified build as NextPDF, or implying endorsement, is not. The acceptable-use list is in Trademark and brand use.

What personal data does licence verification process?

It is channel-scoped, minimal, and documented. On the ionCube-encoded channel, the build verifies its licence periodically online — roughly a 7-day check renewing an approximately 14-day lease. A check sends only a licence identifier and a salted fingerprint hash: never your document content, never a raw fingerprint, and no IP-address field. (As with any HTTPS request, the transport layer necessarily exposes a source IP to the licensing endpoint’s infrastructure; that is network metadata, not payload.) On the signed-source channel, the licence verifies locally; a fully offline deployment sends nothing. See Two delivery channels.

For your GDPR review, that footprint is deliberately minimised, pseudonymised metadata, in the spirit of data protection by design (GDPR Art. 25(1)) and security of processing (GDPR Art. 32(1)).

Can we run where no data may leave the network?

Yes — contract for the signed-source channel. Its licence is a self-contained signed artefact the engine verifies locally, so air-gapped deployments are supported with no periodic connectivity. Two consequences matter legally. Seat counts there are a contractual limit, not runtime-enforced, so seat compliance becomes your obligation. And each licence is minted for exactly one delivery channel, so a licence issued for one build cannot be replayed against the other. The runtime models that binding as an enum:

enum LicenseChannelMode: string
{
    /** The open signed-source NextPDF distribution. */
    case SignedSource = 'signed_source';

    /** The ionCube-encoded NextPDF distribution. */
    case Ioncube = 'ioncube';
}

NextPDF\Enterprise\Licensing\LicenseChannelMode is the build-channel claim a licence is bound to; the comparison table is in Two delivery channels.

What reverse-engineering rights survive the EULA?

The EULA restricts reverse engineering except to the extent mandatory law cannot be excluded. The docs record the preserved carve-outs: decompilation for interoperability and the observe / study / test rights under EU Directive 2009/24/EC, the interoperability exception in 17 U.S.C. §1201(f), and Article 80-2(3) of the R.O.C. Copyright Act. Where you purchase as a consumer, your non-waivable statutory rights prevail. The authoritative wording is the EULA; the summary lives in Product licensing.

If we do not renew, what do we keep?

You are never locked out of software you have already deployed. At the end of a term the software first enters a grace period, then a perpetual-fallback state: the installed version keeps running, but updates and support are no longer entitled. Precise durations are defined by your licence agreement — see Licensing and activation. In every enforcement failure mode the engine degrades to the free, open-source Core; it never bricks. Refund, cancellation, and withdrawal rights are set out in the Refund & Cancellation Policy.

Does readable source give us copy rights?

No. On the signed-source channel the source remains PATEON’s confidential trade secret: being able to read it grants no right to copy, redistribute, disclose, or re-license it beyond the licence — see Product licensing. Both channels convey the same rights under the same EULA. The readable source is released only after the agreement is signed in your account.

Requirements checklist

Legal requirement	Where NextPDF stands	Documented at
Published, versioned licence terms	Yes — the Commercial License Agreement (v3.0); docs link it and never restate it.	EULA, Product licensing
SPDX-identifiable licensing	Yes — `Apache-2.0` (core), `LicenseRef-NextPDF-Commercial` (paid), `LGPL-3.0-or-later` (optional Spectrum).	Product licensing
Copyleft containment	Yes — the paid editions are proprietary; only the optional, separate Spectrum component is LGPL, with a relink path.	Product licensing
Disclosed licence-check data flows	Yes — licence ID plus salted fingerprint hash on the ionCube channel; nothing offline on signed source; never document content.	Delivery channels
GDPR review support	The minimised, pseudonymised footprint supports your own Art. 25(1) / Art. 32(1) review.	This page’s citations
Air-gap mandate	Yes — the signed-source channel verifies its licence locally; the ionCube channel needs periodic connectivity.	Delivery channels
Reverse-engineering carve-outs preserved	Yes — EU 2009/24/EC, 17 U.S.C. §1201(f), and R.O.C. Copyright Act Art. 80-2(3); consumer statutory rights prevail.	Product licensing
Continuity at non-renewal	Yes — grace period, then perpetual fallback on the installed version; the Apache-2.0 core is yours regardless.	Licensing and activation, No lock-in
Trademark clearance	Restricted — nominative, factual reference is fine; no licence includes brand rights.	Trademark
Account personal-data lifecycle	Documented — you can delete your account yourself and your personal data is erased; the record that you signed a licence agreement is retained under legal hold.	Your account, Privacy Policy

Risk & mitigation

This page is not the contract, and it is not legal advice. The EULA, your order and Schedule, and the published policies are binding; where they differ from any docs summary, they govern — legal index.
The ionCube channel requires periodic connectivity. Offline past its lease, premium features pause to Core and resume on reconnect. If your policy forbids the connectivity or the metadata flow, contract for the signed-source channel instead — see Two delivery channels.
Signed-source seat limits are contractual. They are not enforced at runtime, so institute your own seat tracking to stay within the agreement.
Readable source carries confidentiality duties. The signed-source delivery is a trade secret under the EULA; handle it under your agreement’s confidentiality terms, not as open source. Likewise, the licence envelope is a credential: keep it out of public version control — see Licensing and activation.

What to request next

Pull the binding texts for review. The EULA, Terms of Use, Refund & Cancellation Policy, and Privacy Policy — all on the legal index.
Start a no-cost evaluation in parallel. Engineering can request an evaluation grant, or start the 14-day free trial from your account — one per email, no charge today, no auto-renew, under the Trial terms. Begin at the licence portal.
Decide the delivery channel on legal grounds. Connectivity, telemetry, seat enforcement, and confidentiality posture all differ — use the comparison in Two delivery channels. Note that signed-source release requires signing the agreement in your account first.
Plan the pilot’s paperwork. Checkout runs through the Merchant of Record; the licence envelope then arrives per Licensing and activation. Raise legal-review requirements at the contact step, before checkout.