Terms of Service & End-User Licence Agreement — Secretary42

Payment is handled by Paddle as Merchant of Record. When you purchase a subscription, your contract of sale for the purchase transaction is with Paddle.com Market Limited (“Paddle“), Judd House, 18–29 Mora Street, London EC1V 8BT, United Kingdom (company no. 08172165), which acts as the authorised reseller and merchant of record. These Terms govern the licence to use the Software; Paddle’s buyer terms govern the purchase and payment. This contract structure does not limit your mandatory consumer rights. See §6.

1. Who may use Secretary42

1.1 You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter a binding contract. Secretary42 is offered to consumers — natural persons acting for purposes outside their trade, business, or profession (§ 13 BGB). These Terms are a consumer agreement and preserve your mandatory consumer rights (including the right of withdrawal in §7). We do not offer a separate business/enterprise contract, a B2B order process, or a customer data-processing agreement; Secretary42 processes your dictation locally and does not process personal data on a business customer’s behalf, so no Art. 28 GDPR processor contract is required for ordinary use. If you acquire Secretary42 for business purposes, you do so under these Terms and statutory consumer-specific rights (e.g. the right of withdrawal) do not apply to you.

1.2 The Software is currently supported on macOS (Apple Silicon) and Windows x64 only (see §10).

2. Licence grant (proprietary)

2.1 Subject to these Terms and an active subscription, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable licence to install and use the Software on devices you own or control, for your own use, for the duration of your subscription.

2.2 The Software is licensed, not sold. All rights not expressly granted are reserved by insight 42 and its licensors. Unless expressly stated otherwise for specific third-party components, Secretary42 itself is proprietary software of insight 42 UG (haftungsbeschränkt); it is not distributed under an open-source licence.

2.3 Restrictions. You may not, except as permitted by mandatory law or by applicable open-source licences for the third-party components in §2.4: (a) copy, redistribute, resell, rent, lease, or sublicense the Software; (b) reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software, or attempt to derive source code; (c) circumvent, remove, or tamper with the licence-activation mechanism (see §5); (d) share, publish, or transfer your licence token; or (e) remove or alter proprietary notices.

The restriction in §2.3(b) does not apply to the extent such restrictions are prohibited by mandatory law, including your statutory rights of lawful use, back-up copies, observation/study/testing, and decompilation for interoperability or error correction (§§ 69d, 69e UrhG and the EU Software Directive 2009/24/EC). Good-faith security research is not restricted where mandatory law protects it.

2.4 Third-party open-source components. The Software incorporates third-party open-source components (e.g. Electron, whisper.cpp, FFmpeg, SQLite) that remain licensed under their own terms. Those terms prevail over §2.3 for the respective components, and no restriction in these Terms reduces the rights granted to you under those open-source licences. See the Third-Party Notices.

3. What Secretary42 does

3.1 Secretary42 is a local-first dictation application. You press a hotkey, speak, and the bundled on-device engine (whisper.cpp) transcribes your speech on your device, then places the text at your cursor, on the clipboard, or in a file. Transcription runs entirely on your device; there is no cloud transcription and no cloud-transcription fallback. Your audio and transcript text are not transmitted to us. See our Privacy Notice.

3.2 Certain functions use online services that are separate from the local dictation path: purchase & licence delivery (Paddle / email), Whisper-model downloads, application updates, support, and opt-in diagnostics. These are described in the Privacy Notice.

3.3 Accuracy of transcription. Speech recognition and transcription results may be inaccurate or incomplete. You are responsible for reviewing outputs before relying on them, especially in legal, medical, employment, financial, safety-critical, or other high-risk contexts. This does not limit the mandatory liability carve-outs in §11 or your statutory rights.

4. Subscriptions, pricing, renewal, and cancellation

4.1 Plans. Secretary42 is offered as a paid subscription: a monthly plan and an annual plan. Current prices are shown at checkout. Prices to consumers in the EU are shown inclusive of applicable VAT in your local currency; Paddle calculates and collects VAT as merchant of record.

4.2 Auto-renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period (monthly or annual) at the then-current price, unless you cancel before the renewal date.

4.3 Cancellation. You may cancel at any time via the link in your Paddle purchase receipt or the Paddle customer portal. Cancellation stops future renewals; your access continues until the end of the period you have already paid for. Cancellation does not by itself trigger a refund (see the Refund & Withdrawal Policy).

4.4 Price changes. We may change subscription prices for future billing periods; we will give reasonable advance notice, and changes do not affect the period you have already paid for.

5. Licence activation (offline, no account)

5.1 Secretary42 has no user accounts and no sign-in. After purchase, a licence token is sent to the email you used at checkout. You activate the Software by entering that token in the app.

5.2 The token is verified on your device against a key bundled in the app, without any network call. The token contains no personal data (only a plan and a validity window). It is stored in your operating system’s encrypted local storage and re-checked at launch.

5.3 You are responsible for keeping your licence token confidential. Because verification is offline, a token remains technically usable until it expires; a refund or cancellation stops future token issuance but does not instantly disable a token already delivered (see §4.3 and the Refund & Withdrawal Policy). If your subscription is refunded, withdrawn, or terminated, your contractual right to use Secretary42 ends to the extent refunded or terminated; this technical fact does not permit continued use after your right to use has ended.

6. Purchases via Paddle (Merchant of Record)

6.1 Purchases are processed by Paddle as authorised reseller and merchant of record. Your purchase, payment, invoicing, and tax (VAT) are subject to Paddle’s buyer terms and privacy policy. We do not receive or store your payment-card details. The desktop app contains no Paddle API key; to deliver your licence, our backend licence-minter uses a Paddle API key scoped to read the buyer email only, and we may receive limited fulfilment/support data such as your buyer email — see the Privacy Notice. We do not store Paddle customer, subscription, or transaction identifiers.

6.2 For billing questions, refunds, and invoices, see §4, the Refund & Withdrawal Policy, and your Paddle receipt.

7. Right of withdrawal (consumers) and digital content

7.1 As a consumer, you generally have a 14-day right of withdrawal for distance contracts.

7.2 Immediate performance & loss of the right. The Software (your licence token and access) is digital content supplied immediately. For digital content not supplied on a tangible medium, the statutory withdrawal right may expire once performance begins only if, before delivery, you expressly consent to immediate performance, acknowledge that your withdrawal right is lost once performance begins, and receive the statutory confirmation on a durable medium (BGB §356(6) read with the §312f durable-medium confirmation).

7.3 Electronic withdrawal function (BGB §356a). Where applicable, a clearly labelled electronic withdrawal function is provided as required by law.

7.4 Withdrawal instructions and model form. You have the right to withdraw from this contract within 14 days without giving any reason. The withdrawal period is 14 days from the day the contract is concluded. To exercise it, inform us by a clear statement (e.g. a letter or email) of your decision to withdraw; you may use the model form below, but it is not obligatory. To meet the deadline it is enough to send your communication before the period expires. For the digital content described in §7.2, the right of withdrawal expires once performance begins with your prior express consent and acknowledgement. Payments and refunds are processed by Paddle (see the Refund & Withdrawal Policy).

To insight 42 UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Barellistraße 6, 85049 Ingolstadt, Germany — support@insight42.com:

I/we (*) hereby give notice that I/we (*) withdraw from my/our (*) contract for the provision of the following service: Secretary42 subscription.

— Ordered on (*) / received on (*)
— Name of consumer(s)
— Address of consumer(s)
— Signature of consumer(s) (only if this form is notified on paper)
— Date

(*) Delete as appropriate.

7.5 Independently of any statutory right, we offer a voluntary 14-day money-back guarantee — see the Refund & Withdrawal Policy for details, conditions, and how to request it. This voluntary guarantee does not limit any mandatory rights you may have.

8. Updates and support

8.1 Security updates for a supported version of Secretary42 are provided for at least five (5) years from the release of that major version, free of charge, and remain available to you for that version whether or not your subscription is active during that period. Feature updates and customer support may depend on your active subscription plan. The latest stable release on the active update channel is the supported release; users of older versions can upgrade to the latest supported release free of additional security-update charge.

8.2 Support period. The current supported versions, their security-support end dates, and supported platforms are published in our Security Policy and shown at purchase.

8.3 Nothing in these Terms limits mandatory consumer rights for digital products, including statutory conformity, update, security-update, remedy, withdrawal, termination, reimbursement, or warranty rights that cannot be waived by contract (BGB §§327 ff.).

8.4 Support is provided at support@insight42.com.

9. Acceptable use and your content

9.1 You are solely responsible for the audio you dictate and the text the Software produces. Because transcription is local, we have no access to your audio or transcripts and do not monitor your content.

9.2 You must not use the Software unlawfully or in breach of third-party rights.

10. System requirements and availability

10.1 Supported platforms at launch: macOS (Apple Silicon) and Windows x64. Other platforms (including Intel macOS, Linux, and the Mac App Store) are not officially supported under these Terms unless and until we state otherwise.

10.2 The Software requires microphone access and, on macOS, Accessibility permission for automatic paste.

11. Warranties, statutory rights, and liability

11.1 Statutory consumer rights are unaffected. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits your mandatory statutory rights as a consumer, including statutory conformity/warranty and update rights for digital products (§§ 327 ff. BGB), mandatory product-liability rights (Produkthaftungsgesetz), or liability for intent, gross negligence, injury to life/body/health, fraudulent concealment, or guarantees expressly assumed.

11.2 Limitation of liability. Subject to §11.1, insight 42 is liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence and for injury to life, body or health. For the slightly negligent breach of an essential contractual obligation (an obligation whose fulfilment is essential to the proper performance of the contract and on whose observance you may regularly rely), insight 42’s liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this type of contract. insight 42 is not liable for the slightly negligent breach of non-essential obligations. Liability under the Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz) and for any guarantee expressly assumed remains unaffected.

11.3 Statutory BGB §§327 ff. digital-product conformity, update, security-update and remedy obligations, and the EU Product Liability rules for software, apply as provided by law.

12. Term and termination

12.1 These Terms apply while you use the Software or hold an active subscription.

12.2 We may suspend or terminate the licence if you materially breach these Terms (e.g. §2.3). On termination, your licence ends; sections that by their nature survive (e.g. §§2.2, 11, 13) continue.

13. Governing law, consumer protection, and dispute resolution

13.1 These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. As a consumer, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of your country of habitual residence.

13.2 There is no agreement to binding arbitration; statutory court jurisdiction applies.

13.3 Consumer dispute resolution (VSBG). We participate in dispute-resolution proceedings before the Universalschlichtungsstelle des Bundes, Zentrum für Schlichtung e.V., Straßburger Straße 8, 77694 Kehl, universalschlichtungsstelle.de. (No EU-ODR link — the platform was discontinued on 20 July 2025.)

14. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms; we will post the updated version with a new “Last updated” date and, where required, notify you in text or durable form, stating the reasons and the effective date, with a right to reject or cancel and no retroactive effect for the period already paid.

15. Contact

insight 42 UG (haftungsbeschränkt) · Barellistraße 6, 85049 Ingolstadt, Germany · support@insight42.com · see the Impressum for full company details.