Privacy Policy
As of October 14, 2026
1. Controller
Game Ban Appeal UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Mittelstraße 11, 40789 Monheim am Rhein, Germany
Email: feedback@litarbi.app
2. Your case data stays local
LitArbi is a local application for macOS and Windows. Your documents, exhibits and case data are processed solely on your computer — and, for matters you choose to share with your team, on your firm’s own LitArbi Server, which your firm operates on its own web hosting. They are never transmitted to us. Access credentials you enter for third-party services (API keys) are stored in the macOS keychain, not in plain configuration files.
2a. AI services you choose (optional)
LitArbi can translate, summarise, transcribe, read or OCR documents with an AI service — but only if you have entered your own API key for that service and trigger the function yourself. In that case only the content needed for the task (the text, page images or audio of the documents you selected; never your notes) is transmitted directly from your Mac to the provider you chose, under your own account and contract with that provider. Our servers never receive it. Providers and processing locations: OpenAI, L.L.C. (USA), Anthropic, PBC (USA), xAI Corp. (USA), DeepSeek (Hangzhou DeepSeek AI, China), DeepL SE (Germany/EU), Mistral AI (France/EU), Microsoft Azure OpenAI (the region of your Azure resource) and Ollama (runs on your Mac; nothing leaves it). Before the first cloud call the app shows a notice with this information, and the setting "Never send documents to cloud AI services" (Settings ▸ Privacy) blocks all cloud AI. For this processing you are the controller and the provider is your processor: where required, conclude a data processing agreement with the provider (Art. 28 GDPR) and, for providers outside the EU, rely on their standard contractual clauses or EU-US Data Privacy Framework certification. Electronic signing via Skribble AG (Switzerland — adequacy decision) likewise transmits the PDF to be signed under your own Skribble account.
3. Website visits (server logs)
When you visit litarbi.app, our hosting provider Serverprofis GmbH, Server in Germany processes technically necessary data (IP address, date and time, page requested, user agent) in server log files — Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in secure operation). Logs are deleted after a short period.
4. No cookies, no third-party tracking
This website sets no cookies and uses no third-party analytics or tracking services. Fonts are served from our own server — no connection to Google is made. If you use a form, your email address may be kept in your browser's localStorage for convenience, and the pricing page remembers there whether you view monthly or yearly prices; that data stays on your device and is not sent to us.
4a. Reach measurement (our own, anonymous statistics)
We count page views with a self-hosted counter on our own server — no cookies, no third parties. Recorded are the page viewed, the referring domain, the browser language, the campaign tag of the link that brought you if it has one (for example the one in our LinkedIn and Facebook posts), the type of operating system (such as macOS or Windows, read from the browser signature) and an anonymous daily value derived from the IP address and browser signature using a daily-rotating method; the IP address itself is never stored and recognition beyond a single day is impossible. Only aggregate statistics result (e.g. "120 views on 8 July"). Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in measuring the reach of our own website).
5. Beta applications and licensing
When you apply for the beta, ask for the download links or ask for your licence key again, you send us your email address. We process it to run the test programme, to issue and verify licences and to communicate with you about the programme (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). On activation, the app additionally processes your licence data and a pseudonymous device fingerprint (hash — derived from the hardware identifier by one-way hashing, not reversible) to bind the licence to up to two devices; the app later re-checks the licence periodically, transmitting the licence key, that hash and the app version. We also record whether the device runs macOS or Windows (read from the request), only to count how LitArbi is used on each platform (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in planning the product).
Download links and licence keys are sent only by email, to the address entered. The website gives the same answer for every address, so nobody can find out there whether someone has applied or holds a licence. To prevent abuse (at most three such emails a day per address) we keep a one-way hash of the address for two days. If your beta key is sent automatically after you apply, we likewise keep a one-way hash of the IP address the application came from for two days, so that no more than three keys a day can be requested from one connection.
5a. LitArbi Server
If your firm runs its own LitArbi Server, that server regularly asks our licence service for its licence certificate and for updates. It transmits a random installation ID, the server's web address, the number of its users and the firm name stated in the licence — no documents, no matter data and no names or email addresses of its users (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). Everything stored on the server itself is processed under your firm's responsibility; your firm is the controller.
5b. Moot court teams
When a team applies for a free season licence on moot.litarbi.app, the form sends us the competition, the team name, the university, the email address for the key and — if entered — the coach’s email address, the number of computers and a note. We use this to check that the team takes part in the competition, to issue the season licence and to write to you about it (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). We use the coach’s address only to confirm the team with the coach where needed. Activation and licence checks work as described in section 5; the season licence names the team and the university.
Only if you tick “Keep me posted about LitArbi after the season” do we email the address for the key about LitArbi after the season — a few times a year at most (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). We store the tick together with the date and the wording you agreed to, as proof of your consent. You can withdraw it at any time, with effect for the future, by replying to any of these emails or writing to us; we then stop.
5c. Sending our emails (Brevo)
We send licence keys, download links, activation reminders and other emails about your licence through Brevo (Sendinblue SAS, 17 rue Salneuve, 75017 Paris, France), which delivers them for us as our processor under a data processing agreement pursuant to Art. 28 GDPR. Brevo receives your email address and the content of the email and records whether it was delivered or bounced. Brevo’s subprocessors and the safeguards for any transfer outside the EU are listed in its data processing agreement. To count opens and link clicks, Brevo adds a small image to the email and routes links through its servers; it counts them only in total, without linking them to you, and we do not use these figures. If Brevo cannot accept an email, our hosting provider’s mail server sends it instead. We log each email we send (recipient, subject, time, whether it was delivered) for 90 days, so that we can find out why an email did not arrive (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR).
5d. Our pages on LinkedIn and Facebook
We run company pages on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/company/litarbi) and Facebook (facebook.com/litarbi). When you visit them, LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company (Wilton Plaza, Wilton Place, Dublin 2, Ireland) and Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. (Merrion Road, Dublin 4, D04 X2K5, Ireland) process your data under their own privacy policies. For the page statistics they give us (“Page Insights” / page analytics) — aggregated figures such as visits, reach and the professions or regions of followers, never individual profiles — we are jointly responsible with them (Art. 26 GDPR). The terms are the Page Insights Controller Addendum (Meta) and the Page Insights Joint Controller Addendum (LinkedIn); under them, LinkedIn and Meta answer requests about these data. If you write to us or comment there, we see what you share and use it only to answer you (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can exercise your rights with us or directly with LinkedIn or Meta. Links in our posts carry a campaign tag (see 4a).
5e. LitArbi for iPad & Android
The tablet apps keep your matters only on the tablet: bundles you open there, matters copied from your firm's LitArbi Server, your hearing list and your markings stay on the device and are excluded from its backups — we receive none of it. Removing a matter in the app deletes its copy. Face ID or the device passcode are checked by the device itself.
To unlock the app you sign in with the email address of your licence; we send a one-time code to that address. We store the code only as a one-way hash, for 15 minutes, and — to allow at most five such emails a day per address — a one-way hash of the address for two days. Instead you can enter your licence key. When you sign in and when the app later re-checks its licence, it transmits the licence key or the address, a random device ID created by the app (not derived from the hardware), the app version and whether it runs on an iPad or an Android tablet — to bind the licence to the agreed number of tablets and to count use per platform (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR).
If the address has no licence that includes the tablet apps, signing in starts one free 14-day trial. We store the address, when the trial began, the device ID and the app version, so that each address has one trial, and delete this record two years after the trial began (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR — our legitimate interest in preventing repeated trials). The tablet apps contain no analytics, advertising or third-party tracking.
For a matter of your firm's LitArbi Server you can switch on Share notes and markings with the team. Then the notes and markings you make on the tablet are also kept on your firm's server, for everyone on the matter, with the name of whoever made them — never with us. End-to-end encrypted matters are excluded: their notes and markings stay on each tablet.
Deleting your account and data. To have your sign-in for the tablet apps deleted — the trial record, the device IDs of your tablets and the one-time-code records — email feedback@litarbi.app from the address you sign in with, subject “Delete my LitArbi data”, or use the support form. We confirm by email and delete within one month. Records of licences and payments that commercial and tax law require us to keep stay until that period ends; a licence your firm bought stays with the firm. Matters on the tablet you delete in the app itself (“Remove this matter from the tablet”); notes and markings shared with the team are on your firm’s LitArbi Server and are deleted there by its administrator.
5f. LitArbi for Word
The add-in's pages are loaded from litarbi.app like any page of this website (see above); Office.js, the script every Word add-in uses, is loaded from Microsoft. With LitArbi on the same Mac or PC, the add-in talks to that app at 127.0.0.1 — the connection never leaves the computer. Otherwise it talks only to your firm's LitArbi Server: your email, password and code go there to sign in — never to us. On this device it keeps the server address, your email and the server's sign-in token in the add-in's own storage; signing out removes the token. What it inserts — the citation and a litarbi:// link — stays in your document. On the iPad, Open in LitArbi passes the matter and the exhibit to LitArbi for iPad in a litarbi.app address after a “#”, a part that browsers never send to a server. A bundle's exhibit list stays in the add-in's own storage. The add-in contains no analytics, advertising or tracking.
5g. LitArbi for Google Docs
LitArbi for Google Docs is an add-on that you install into your Google account from the Google Workspace Marketplace; it runs at Google, in your account, and we receive no data from it. It opens only the Google Docs document in which you use it: it writes the citations you insert — the text, a link to the exhibit (a litarbi.app address with the exhibit after a “#”) and an invisible named range that marks the citation — into that document, as text or as a new footnote, and it reads the LitArbi citations already in that document to choose between the full and the short form and to build a List of Exhibits. It does not open, list or change any other document in your Google Drive. If you sign in to your firm's LitArbi Server in the add-on, Google connects to the address you enter, passes your email, password and code to that server — never to us — and receives the list of your matters and the exhibits of the matter you choose; the server's sign-in token stays in the add-on's own storage in your browser, and signing out removes it. A bundle's exhibit list also stays in that storage. The add-on connects only over HTTPS, and only to the server you enter; LitArbi keeps no Google user data, the citations stay in your document until you remove them, and signing out deletes the server's sign-in token. We do not store, sell or transfer Google user data, do not use it for advertising or to train models, and no one at LitArbi reads it. LitArbi's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. You can remove the add-on in Google Docs (Extensions ▸ Add-ons ▸ Manage add-ons) and withdraw its access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
5h. LitArbi for LibreOffice
LitArbi for LibreOffice is an extension for LibreOffice Writer that LitArbi installs on your computer; it runs there, and we receive no data from it. It reads the exhibit list that LitArbi writes on the same computer (LitArbi-Exhibits.txt in your Documents folder) and writes the citations you insert — the text, a litarbi:// link and a bookmark — and the numbers it gives into the document you are working in; it reads the LitArbi citations already in that document. It hands litarbi:// links (open an exhibit, write the exhibit list again) to LitArbi on the same computer, and its Help opens litarbi.app in your browser. If you sign in to your firm's LitArbi Server under Settings, it connects only to the address you enter, encrypted (HTTPS) unless that server runs on your own computer: your email, password and code go to that server to sign in — never to us — and it receives the list of your matters and the exhibits of the matter you choose. It keeps the server address, your email, the server's sign-in token and the chosen matter in your LibreOffice user profile, never your password; signing out removes the token. The extension contains no analytics, advertising or tracking.
6. Updates
On launch the app checks GitHub (GitHub, Inc., USA — a Microsoft company) for a newer version; your IP address is transmitted to GitHub in the process (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). GitHub is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. The download links we email point to GitHub as well; downloading transmits your IP address to GitHub.
7. Bug reports and crash reports
Bug reports and feature requests are sent only when you actively choose to (Help menu). After a crash, the app offers on the next launch to send a crash report; nothing is sent unless you click "Send Report", and "Show Report" displays the exact content beforehand (the prompt can be switched off in Settings ▸ Advanced). A report contains your message, the app and macOS version, the pseudonymous device hash, your email address only if you enter it, and — for bug reports only if you tick the option — the last lines of the app's diagnostic log plus, for crashes, an excerpt of the macOS crash report. Before transmission user-name paths, email addresses and IP addresses are masked; document names appear in the log only as short hashes. We do not store the IP address from which a report was sent. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (support) and Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (stability of the software). Reports are deleted 180 days after they have been dealt with and at the latest 365 days after receipt.
7a. Payment processing (Paddle)
Paid licences are sold by our online reseller Paddle.com Market Limited, London, United Kingdom (“Paddle”), as merchant of record. Paddle’s checkout is loaded only when you start a purchase on the buy page or in the app. Paddle collects and processes the data needed for the purchase, payment, invoice and VAT (such as name, email address, country, payment details) as an independent controller; Paddle’s privacy policy applies. Your payment details never reach our servers. Paddle provides us with your email address, your name or your firm’s name, the chosen plan, the number of seats, the order number and the payment status so we can issue, deliver and manage your licence (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). The European Commission has adopted an adequacy decision for the United Kingdom; for transfers to other countries see Paddle’s privacy policy.
7b. Contact form and support requests
When you write to us through the contact form or open a support request on litarbi.app, we receive your name, your email address, and — if you give them — your firm, licence key, product and version, the subject, your message and the page you came from. We use them only to answer you and to help you. The request is stored as a support ticket in our licence backend on our web hosting. You receive a confirmation by email with a private link on which you can read the conversation and answer; anyone who has the link can read it, so please do not forward it. Emails go out through Brevo (section 5c); the IP address is not stored. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR for enquiries about a contract or about your licence, otherwise Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (our interest in answering enquiries and helping our users). A solved or closed ticket is deleted one year after its last message, any ticket at the latest two years after it was opened.
8. Retention
We keep licence and programme data for the duration of the test programme or the licence relationship and delete it afterwards — licence records three years after the licence ended (limitation period) — unless statutory retention duties apply. Device activations are deleted when you deactivate a device or the licence ends. Reach statistics (section 4a) and the log of emails sent (section 5c) are deleted after 90 days, bug and crash reports as described in section 7. Moot applications we decline are deleted six months after the decision; a consent to emails after the season (section 5b) is kept until you withdraw it. Trial records of the tablet apps (section 5e) are deleted two years after the trial began; sign-in codes expire after 15 minutes and are deleted within a day.
8a. Erasure inside the app
Because your case data is stored only on your Mac, you exercise erasure yourself: Settings ▸ Privacy ▸ "Erase Current Matter Permanently" removes the matter's database, all managed files, snapshots, an external storage folder if configured and the exhibit list of the Word and LibreOffice add-ins. Deleting a document inside LitArbi removes its file, text layer and metadata. Copies you exported or bundled elsewhere are under your control.
9. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the rights of access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and objection to processing based on Art. 6(1)(f) (Art. 21) — contact feedback@litarbi.app. You may also lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, e.g. the data protection authority of North Rhine-Westphalia (LDI NRW).