License terms

1. Parties and subject matter

This agreement is concluded between you (the “Licensee”) and Roman Moor, Milbertshofener Straße 54, 80807 München, Germany (the “Licensor”). It governs your use of the CageStep extraction engine (the “Software”). The Blender add-on distributed alongside it is not licensed under this agreement — section 7 says what governs it instead. By installing, activating or using the Software you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the Software; your rights in the add-on under the GNU General Public License are unaffected either way.

2. Grant of license

Upon payment, the Licensor grants you a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide right to install and use the Software within the scope defined in section 3. The license may be passed on under section 10. All rights not expressly granted remain with the Licensor.

3. Tiers and seats

A seat is one named natural person, not one machine. The holder of a seat may install the Software on any machines they personally work on, provided no one else uses those installations.

• Indie grants one seat, for one individual — an artist, freelancer, or single-person business. It may not be used by, or shared within, an organisation.
• Studio grants five seats within a single company or organisation for up to five named individuals. A seat may be reassigned to a replacement person when the previous holder stops using the Software — permanently, not in rotation. If more than five people need the Software, an additional Studio license is required.

Seat limits are not technically enforced. They are stated in your license file and honoured on trust.

4. Updates

Your purchase includes every version of the Software the Licensor releases, for as long as the Software exists. There is no maintenance window, no update subscription and no renewal fee, and your license file carries no expiry date. The Licensor remains free to decide what to build and is under no obligation to release any specific feature on any timetable.

This freedom does not touch the Licensor’s statutory duty toward consumers under § 327f BGB to provide the updates needed to keep the Software in conformity — including security updates — for the period a Licensee may reasonably expect, and to inform them about those updates. Nothing in this section limits that duty.

5. License file and activation

The license is delivered as a cryptographically signed file containing your name, email address, tier and seat count. It activates the Software without a network connection and the Software transmits no activation, usage or telemetry data at any time. The license file is personal to you: publishing it, sharing it or distributing it is a material breach of this agreement. Passing it on as part of a complete transfer under section 10 is not.

6. Trial version

A trial is granted as its own license file, issued on request and carrying an expiry date 15 days after it was first issued. Until that date the Software is complete: nothing is disabled, nothing is watermarked, and files you produce during the trial may be used commercially and remain yours afterwards. After it, the Software stops extracting. Requesting a trial again reissues the same license with the same expiry rather than extending it; obtaining further trial periods through additional email addresses is a breach of this agreement. The Software does not run without a license file of some kind. Sections 9 and 11 to 15 apply to the trial in full.

7. The Blender add-on and the engine

The Blender add-on (the “bridge”) is distributed under the GNU General Public License and your rights in it are governed by that license, not by this agreement. The extraction engine is a separate, independent, proprietary program that communicates with the bridge over a defined interface; this agreement covers the engine. Nothing here limits any right the GPL grants you in the bridge.

8. Third-party components

The engine incorporates open-source components written by third parties. Their own licenses continue to apply to those components. Where such a license grants you rights that go beyond this agreement — to the component’s source code, to modify it, to reverse engineer it for interoperability, or to relink it — that license prevails for that component, and section 9 does not restrict those rights. They are named, with their full license texts, in NOTICES.txt in the download; nothing in the engine is under a copyleft license that would extend to the Software or to your files. Ask at the address in section 19 if you cannot find it.

9. Restrictions

You may not:

• reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the engine — except where §§ 69d, 69e UrhG or other mandatory law permit it. Your rights to make a backup copy, to correct errors, to observe, study and test how the Software works, and to decompile for interoperability are not restricted by this agreement and cannot be, and the same goes for the third-party components in section 8;
• sublicense, rent, lease, lend, timeshare or redistribute the engine, or otherwise make it available to third parties, except as section 10 expressly permits;
• publish or share your license file, or keep using the Software after passing the license on;
• circumvent, remove or interfere with license validation;
• operate the engine as a hosted, cloud, batch or automated conversion service through which third parties convert their own files. Using the Software in your own work is entirely free of restriction: converting a client’s model for them, and invoicing for it, is expressly permitted on both tiers. What this bullet prohibits is handing others the engine’s function instead of your work — a public or internal-to-others conversion endpoint, a queue, a self-service portal;
• remove or alter copyright, trademark or authorship notices.

10. Passing your license on

You may permanently transfer your license to someone else — by selling it, by giving it away, or as part of a sale of your business. The transfer must be complete and permanent: you hand over the license file, you delete every copy of the Software and of that file that you still hold, and you stop using it. A Studio license moves as a whole, not seat by seat. Please tell the Licensor at the address in section 19 so the file can be reissued in the new holder’s name; the new holder then has the same rights you had, including the update entitlement in section 4.

What is not permitted is keeping a copy and passing on another, splitting a license, or making it available temporarily — renting, lending or timesharing.

11. Your data and your output

The Software runs entirely on your machine. Your models, geometry and exported files never leave it and are at no point transmitted to the Licensor. All rights in the files you produce with the Software belong to you. The Licensor claims no interest in them and no royalty on their use, commercial or otherwise.

12. Purchase, payment and refunds

Purchases are concluded with Polar Software Inc. acting as merchant of record. Polar is your contractual partner for payment, invoicing and VAT, and its terms apply to the transaction itself. Prices shown on this website include VAT for customers in the European Union and the United Kingdom — the figure shown is the figure charged. In the United States, Canada and India sales tax is added at checkout, as is the convention there. Polar shows the full breakdown before you confirm.

A 14-day money-back guarantee applies to every purchase, without condition on how much you used the Software in that period and whether or not you are a consumer. Ask by writing to the address in section 19, or through Polar; the Licensor will instruct Polar to refund, and Polar executes the payment. This guarantee is given in addition to — never instead of — the statutory rights in sections 13 and 14.

13. Right of withdrawal

If you are a consumer in the European Union you have a statutory right to withdraw from the purchase within 14 days, without giving a reason. The Licensor does not ask you to consent to immediate performance and thereby give up that right under § 356 (5) BGB, even though the download and the license file reach you at once. The full instruction and the model withdrawal form are on the right of withdrawal page, which forms part of this agreement.

You may declare a withdrawal however you like — an email saying so is enough — or use the electronic withdrawal function required by § 356a BGB: Withdraw from contract. It takes effect the moment you confirm, and a confirmation of receipt is sent to you immediately.

14. Conformity and warranty

The Software has the qualities described in the product documentation and on this website. The measured accuracy figures published here describe the test cases stated with them, not a guarantee for every model, and the Licensor does not warrant that any specific third-party CAD application will accept a given file — which is exactly why the trial is free and full-function and why the guarantee in section 12 asks no questions.

Where you are a consumer, §§ 327 ff. BGB apply in full and nothing in this agreement narrows them: no deviation from the objective conformity requirements is agreed here, and the paragraph above is a description of the product, not a limitation of your rights. Where you are not a consumer, claims for defects lapse twelve months after delivery, except for defects fraudulently concealed, for any guarantee expressly given, and for claims covered by the unlimited liability in section 15.

15. Liability

The Licensor is liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, and under the German Product Liability Act. In cases of slight negligence the Licensor is liable only for breach of a material contractual obligation (an obligation whose fulfilment makes proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may regularly rely), and in that case only for foreseeable damage typical of this type of contract. Any further liability is excluded. You remain responsible for verifying exported geometry before relying on it in manufacturing, and for maintaining backups of your work.

16. Term and termination

The license is granted for an unlimited term. The Licensor may terminate it for cause if you materially breach section 5 or section 9 and do not remedy the breach within a reasonable period after being asked to. On termination you must stop using the Software and delete the license file; files you have already produced are unaffected, and a refund already due to you under section 12, 13 or 14 remains due.

17. Changes to these terms

The version of this agreement in force when you purchase applies to that purchase. Later versions apply to later purchases only; they do not retroactively narrow rights you have already paid for — including the update entitlement in section 4. Your license file records the date it was issued, which identifies the version that applies to you, and any superseded version is kept and will be sent to you on request from the address in section 19.

18. Transfer by the Licensor

The Licensor may transfer this agreement, together with the rights in the Software, to whoever takes over the CageStep product — for instance on a sale of the business. Your license passes with it unchanged, including the update entitlement in section 4, and section 17 continues to prevent it from being narrowed afterwards.

19. Governing law, venue, and contact

This agreement is governed by the law of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a consumer, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which you have your habitual residence (Art. 6 Rome I). If you are a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, the place of jurisdiction is München. Consumers may bring proceedings at their own place of residence. If any provision is or becomes invalid, the remainder stays in force.

Questions about this agreement, requests to reissue a transferred license, third-party license texts, and superseded versions of these terms: contact@cagestep.com, or Roman Moor, Milbertshofener Straße 54, 80807 München, Germany.