You may have noticed that we recently changed our site's Terms of Use. Some of you have asked what that’s about. Since one of our core values here at GrabCAD is transparency, it’s important to tell you why we updated the terms.
Why change the terms?
Put simply, they were kind of old and reflective of exactly what they were - a collection of terms assembled piecemeal over the years as we grew from a tiny startup to what we are today. That’s six years of a line here, a paragraph there, an odd word or two over there, and so on.
You can get away with that as a startup (when your top priority is the product and your customers). You really shouldn’t proceed that way once you’ve arrived.
Look at the size of our Community. Look at how many people rely on Workbench. We’ve arrived. Time for an update.
What do the new terms mean to me as a GrabCAD Community member?
As a Community member, nothing that you care about has changed. You still own the designs you share with the Community (what the Terms of Use calls User Submissions) and you still can remove them when you want.
We are not selling your stuff without your permission.
Like always, we continue to reserve the right to use your User Submissions to maintain and promote the GrabCAD website - as well as to make them available for Google search. However, our policy is to ask you first before we use any of your submissions in marketing materials.
There have been no changes to the licensing model or our approach to intellectual property ownership.
For example, just as the old Terms of Service (Section 4(a)) kept ownership of User Submissions with you, so too do the Terms of Use (see Section 13). But equally, just as the old Terms of Service permitted us and other members to use your User Submissions for limited purposes (Sections 4(c)-(d)), the Terms of Use have kept that approach, too (see Sections 6.1 and 6.2).
As always, however, your User Submissions are your responsibility and it's essential for GrabCAD to be able to remove content in order to maintain an appropriate and useful community library that respects the rights of others (see Section 6 of the Terms of Use, which re-articulates what was previously in Section 5 of the old Terms of Service).
Additionally, after receiving questions about the Terms of Use, we decided to update them again slightly to more clearly define the licensing mechanism for suggestions and ideas that we receive about the website and its features (what the Terms of Use calls Feedback). You'll notice that Feedback is explicitly stated to exclude your User Submissions (see Section 5) – so your User Submissions remain strictly confined to the permitted uses described at Sections 6.1 and 6.2, and are not covered by the Feedback license.
We also made some other minor changes for clarification purposes.
What do the new terms mean to me as a GrabCAD Workbench User?
As a Workbench user, nothing has changed. Your projects remain 100% secure and private.
We’ve received a few questions from Workbench users asking for clarification or more detail about the privacy of their CAD files. This is understandable. People want to make sure that their company’s IP is protected.
It’s also a familiar topic for us as it’s come up since Workbench was first introduced. Since it may not be familiar to everyone, it probably makes sense to address some of your questions here. These are all straight from our support inbox.
Is there any individual Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for Workbench or is it the same for all GrabCAD's Community, Print and Workbench services?
Yes. Workbench (as well as Print) is now governed by separate terms called the GrabCAD Software Terms of Service and Use, which you can view here. We've done this in order to more clearly differentiate between mere use of the GrabCAD website and its public features on the one hand, and the software offerings of the website on the other.
As far as I know...data may be stored by third party service providers. Can you tell me more about confidentiality of our CAD file (one of the most valuable thing of our company)?
Taken straight from our security whitepaper (link):
"GrabCAD stores all data using Amazon Web Services (AWS). With AWS the data is stored redundantly across multiple devices across multiple environmentally controlled facilities. AWS infrastructure and controls are subject to annual SAS-70 Type II audits and AWS information security management processes and controls have achieved ISO 27001 and PCI DSS Level 1 certification. GrabCAD is located in Cambridge, MA and all of our AWS data centers are located in the United States."
Your data on Workbench is accessible only to you and your team. We never make files uploaded to Workbench publicly accessible.
I can see that you have updated your terms of service. I[f] I understood correctly it is valid for the entire website (both Community and Workbench) and I wish to know if the point 6 (user submission) is valid also for the workbench area.
The easiest way to answer this question is that while there are separate terms for Community and Workbench (and Print), user submissions to Workbench are always private.
In closing
Thanks for being part of GrabCAD. We wouldn't be here without you.
You can read the full terms of use here. Our software terms are here.
