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A special protection technology is used to protect ABBYY FineReader Engine from illegal copying and distribution. This technology effectively excludes unauthorized use of ABBYY products by persons who have not signed a License Agreement with the software copyright owner.

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Developer and Runtime Licenses

ABBYY FineReader Engine has two types of licenses:
  • Developer License
    This license grants an SDK customer the right to use ABBYY FineReader Engine for development purposes only or for internal use of the developed applications only under the terms of Software Developer License Agreement. Developer License does not allow developers to distribute their applications with ABBYY FineReader Engine functions inside or to use the developed applications internally.
  • Runtime License
    This license grants developers the right to distribute ABBYY FineReader Engine functions inside developer’s applications. Runtime licensing is regulated by Runtime License Agreement with ABBYY.
All the licenses in one project share the same Customer Project ID, which is passed to the methods which load the Engine object as one of the input parameters. The end user’s Runtime License should correspond to the Customer Project ID with which your application was compiled.
Each license defines available ABBYY FineReader Engine functionality by the set of included modules. For details about functionality your license includes see the description of ABBYY FineReader Engine 12 Modules. Use and management of the licenses is performed with the License Manager utility.
The remainder of this topic applies to Linux and Windows

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License types

In Linux and Windows, both Developer and Runtime Licenses can be used either locally on a single computer or in a network. Consequently, each FRE license can have one of the following types:
  • Standalone — for local work on a single computer.
  • Network — licenses will be located on the server and passed down to workstations through the network. This type of license can also support a redundant configuration with two license servers. Contact your sales manager to find out.

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License protection

ABBYY FineReader Engine 12 supports several protection mechanisms in Linux and Windows. Each of the license types can use one of the types of protection presented in the table below.

License protection

Mechanism of work

Special requirements

Usage as Developer
or Runtime license

Usage as Standalone
or Network license

Online protection

Uses a password-protection file.

A persistent connection to the ABBYY Online licensing service (see Online Licensing).

Allowed as both types.

Allowed as both types.

Software protection

Uses an activation file that should be obtained from the ABBYY server during a license activation process.

Activation is carried out with the help of the License Manager utility included in the ABBYY FineReader Engine package.

Details about the use of protection keys and license activation can be found in the Activation section. For additional licensing information, please contact the ABBYY office serving your region. You can find the list of ABBYY offices in the How to Buy section. See also Activation License Manager Utility ABBYY FineReader Engine 12 Modules Distribution - Linux