Maybe it did this in the past, but I wasn’t aware of it. But Acrobat Reader ver. 8 now has OCR built in and is very easy to use (as far as the process of copying and pasting from a pdf goes). It’s actually pretty accurate, too. You do get an occasional phrase like:

“of any settlement Dr heaving of soil”

I present to you Dr. Heaving from the far off land of Soil! He just recently went through a divorce from Lady Puke of yon dirt and this is his settlement.

Anyway, still a neat feature. I do miss having my little grabby hand icon by default though and haven’t found a super easy way to get it back.