An acronym for Portable Document Format. A PDF is a file format created by Adobe Systems Incorporated that represents documents independent of the hardware and software used to create and view the file. A PDF is designed to capture the entirety of a document, including any text and images contained in the document. PDFs may also contain features added by the creator of the document, such as hyperlinks.

The PDF is the file type used by most federal and state courts for their electronic filing systems. Virtually all federal bankruptcy, district and appellate courts use the Case Management/Electronic Filing Case Filing (CM/ECF) system. In most of these courts, parties using the CM/ECF system to file and serve documents must upload a PDF version of the relevant documents (see, for example, D. Mass. CM/ECF Guidelines, at p. 2).

For more information on electronically filing documents, see Practice Note, Filing Documents in Federal District Court: Filing Electronically.