CoCAD Privacy Policy
This document is published in French and in English.
This policy covers the cocad.ai website, the CoCAD newsletter, the CoCAD desktop Software, the paid download, and mail you send to support@cocad.ai. CoCAD LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company, is the controller of the information we hold. Paddle is the merchant of record and an independent controller of checkout data under Paddle's own privacy notice. We do not sell personal information. We do not use advertising trackers or analytics scripts on the Software or the website's public pages, and our emails carry no open-tracking pixels or click-tracking links.
The desktop Software runs on your computer. There is no CoCAD password account and no license server. Your designs stay on your machine unless you send them.
What the Software sends
After a notice the first time you run it, the Software checks updates.cocad.ai for a new version each time it starts, unless you turn this off. You can also check by hand in Settings. Each check sends your IP address, which update channel you use (stable or beta), and the name and version of the updater. It does not send your CoCAD version, your files, or a device ID. The Software also talks to other programs on your own computer. If you connect an outside AI service, such as OpenAI or Anthropic, what you send it, which can include your design, goes to that service under its own terms, not to us. Cloudflare keeps logs of those checks for us for up to 7 days.
Email we send
CoCAD <getcocad@cocad.ai> sends newsletter signup confirmations and the newsletter you asked for. That address is not monitored. Paid-download links come in a reply from support@cocad.ai. Write support@cocad.ai for help; human replies come only from support@cocad.ai.
1. Who holds what
If you buy a license, Paddle collects checkout data under Paddle's privacy notice. CoCAD LLC receives from Paddle the email you paid with, that you bought the one product, the purchase date, the Paddle transaction ID, and the license record needed to honor that Download Year. When you buy, we also record the language you chose for the CoCAD License Agreement and Refund Policy, which box you ticked, and which version of each you accepted. That record is our proof of what you agreed to. It passes through Paddle's checkout with your order. We do not collect card numbers. We are not the checkout seller.
If you subscribe to the CoCAD newsletter, we store: the email address you typed; the date and time you signed up, and your signup order; whether you have confirmed the address, and when; whether you asked for the newsletter (or, on the earlier waitlist form, ticked the box for news); a referral code (a random 8-character string, not derived from your email) so that a link you share can be credited to you, the number of people who have signed up through your link, and the code of whoever referred you if you arrived through someone else's link; and your answers to the two optional questions on the confirmation page (which operating system you use and what you would build), and when you answered, if you answer them. We also keep a lookup from your referral code to your email address so that credit can find you. Random single-purpose tokens are also created: one in each confirmation email, which is destroyed when you click it, and one that lets the confirmation page attach your optional answers to your entry. Signing up again creates new ones. Each token expires after 60 days. To stop one connection signing up hundreds of addresses, we also count form submissions from each IP address. That count is stored under the IP address itself and is deleted after one hour. The signup form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile. Completing it sends your IP address to Cloudflare so it can judge whether you are a bot. Turnstile does not track you across websites and does not serve advertising. The newsletter is news about CoCAD, including when it goes on sale. It goes only to addresses that subscribed and confirmed. If you joined the earlier waitlist, ticked the box for news and confirmed, you get the newsletter; if you confirmed without ticking the box, you get only the one email saying CoCAD is on sale. To stop the newsletter, write to support@cocad.ai from the address in question and it stops. No newsletter has been sent yet. Every newsletter email will carry a one-click unsubscribe link and our postal address before any is sent. We do not sell the subscriber list.
If you write support@cocad.ai, we receive what you send. If you create and send a diagnostic bundle, you can inspect it first. We only receive it if you send it.
If you only read the site, we keep no record of you in our own storage. Our host (Cloudflare) processes the ordinary technical information every web request carries (your IP address, browser type and the page requested) to serve the page and to protect the site from attack, and Cloudflare may keep logs of those requests for us. We do not build profiles from it and we do not have a database of visitors. Our own pages set no tracking or advertising cookies and record no sessions, so there is no cookie banner. Paddle's checkout, when you open it, runs under Paddle's privacy notice.
2. Information we do not collect
Your designs, models, and exports. The Software has no mechanism to send them to us, other than a support bundle you choose to create and send.
A CoCAD password account. There is none.
We do not sell, rent, or share personal information for advertising.
3. Why we hold it
We use what we hold to honor the license you bought, to confirm a newsletter signup and send the newsletter you asked for, to answer support, and to keep tax and accounting records the law requires. We do not use it for advertising. We do not sell it.
Where the GDPR applies, our legal basis for the newsletter is your consent: submitting the newsletter form and clicking the confirmation link consents to the newsletter (on the earlier waitlist form, submitting it consented to the waitlist and the checkbox consented to news). You may withdraw consent at any time without giving a reason. Serving and protecting the website itself, including stopping abusive signups, rests on our legitimate interest in keeping it online. For purchase, license and download records, our legal basis is performing our contract with you. For tax and accounting records, it is our legal obligation.
To get a download link during a Download Year, write support@cocad.ai from the email you paid with.
A full refund or chargeback of the entry license ends that license, including any later Download Years bought for it; we refund those Download Years at the same time. A full refund of a later Download Year ends only that year. CoCAD never remotely disables an installed copy.
Paddle handles checkout, tax or VAT as merchant of record, and receipts.
4. Sharing
Paddle is the merchant of record and handles checkout data under Paddle's notice.
These companies process data on our behalf: Cloudflare hosts the site, stores the newsletter list, the license record and download links, runs the anti-bot check, and receives email sent to our cocad.ai addresses and passes it on. Resend delivers the email we send you, using Amazon Web Services' email service. If we owe you a refund for a Download Year (because a full refund or chargeback ended your license, because you bought one on an email that has no license, or because one checkout held both a license and a Download Year), our system sends an internal alert to support@cocad.ai through Resend with your email and the Paddle transaction IDs, and keeps a record of that alert for up to 120 days; the alert email itself is kept with our support mail.
Google hosts the inbox where mail sent to support@cocad.ai is read, so Google sees your email address and anything you write to us.
We share where the law requires. We do not share personal information for advertising.
If CoCAD LLC were ever sold or wound down, we would tell newsletter subscribers and earlier waitlist signups by email before anything moved, and you would be able to leave first.
5. Where it is processed
CoCAD LLC is in Minnesota, United States. The companies that process data for us are United States companies, and information we hold may be processed in the United States and in other countries where they run their services. Paddle processes checkout data under Paddle's notice, which may involve other countries. We have not appointed a separate EU or UK representative.
6. Retention
We keep the license record as long as needed to honor entitlement and as tax law requires. Licensed Versions keep working, so we keep the record that proves the purchase. Support mail is kept as long as useful to support you. We keep your newsletter entry, or your earlier waitlist entry, until you ask us to delete it; an earlier waitlist entry without the newsletter may also be deleted once the email saying CoCAD is on sale has gone out. Nothing is removed automatically today: if you want your entry gone, write to support@cocad.ai and a person deletes it, including the referral lookup tied to it. Asking to stop the newsletter turns it off; asking for deletion removes your entry entirely. Each signup token expires after 60 days, and the per-IP submission count is deleted after one hour. A paid-download link works once and is deleted when it is used, when a newer link replaces it, or 24 hours after it was issued, whichever comes first. A full refund or chargeback also deletes any unused link. For each email we keep a log of the last 20 download links issued to it (when each was issued and expired, whether it was replaced, and when it was used), and we delete that log 120 days after the last link was issued or used. The license record (the email you paid with, the Paddle transaction ID, which purchase it was, when its Download Year starts and ends, whether it was refunded or charged back, and the language, box and versions of the terms you accepted) is kept as described at the start of this section. If we owe you a refund for a Download Year (because a full refund or chargeback ended your license, because you bought one on an email that has no license, or because one checkout held both a license and a Download Year), our system sends an internal alert to support@cocad.ai through Resend with your email and the Paddle transaction IDs, and keeps a record of that alert for up to 120 days; the alert email itself is kept with our support mail. Paddle's retention is Paddle's.
7. Your rights
You may ask what we hold, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or ask us to send you a copy. You may stop the newsletter at any time by writing to support@cocad.ai. We may need to keep the minimum license and tax record the law requires, or that is needed to honor entitlement. Write support@cocad.ai. We answer privacy requests within 30 days. Checkout-data requests that only Paddle holds should go to Paddle.
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or another place with a privacy authority, you may also complain to that authority. California residents have the same access, delete, and do-not-sell rights against us: we do not sell personal information.
8. Children
The website, the newsletter, the Software and any store are not directed to children under 13. You must be 13 or older to subscribe to the newsletter. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13; if you believe a child under 13 has given us an address, write to support@cocad.ai and we will delete it. If you are under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian must agree.
9. Security
Downloads use encrypted connections. We keep what we hold to a minimum. Your designs stay on your systems. Paddle's checkout security is Paddle's.
10. Changes and contact
If we change this policy we will post the new version with its date. If a change affects what we do with your newsletter or waitlist address, we will email the affected addresses before it takes effect. A change never expands what an already-shipped version of the Software collects.
CoCAD LLC — PO Box 42, Chanhassen, MN 55317, USA — support@cocad.ai
This policy is published in English and in French. The version in the language you choose governs. If you are a Consumer, and that version is unclear or differs from the other version, the meaning more favorable to you applies.