Privacy

Privacy Policy – GateLab

Last updated: October 7th 2026

This policy explains which personal data we process when you visit fpga.ch, license.fpga.ch, downloads.fpga.ch or updates.fpga.ch, buy a GateLab license, or use the GateLab app. It follows the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and, where it applies, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

1. Controller

Richard Klingler
Homrigstrasse 1a
5304 Endingen
Switzerland
Email: support AT fpga DOT ch

2. In short

  • We collect only what is needed to sell, deliver and check licenses.
  • No advertising, no tracking or analytics on our own pages, no data sales.
  • Payment data is handled by Paddle; we never see your card or bank details.
  • Your Claude conversations go to Anthropic under your own account, not to us.

3. Visiting our websites

Our web servers log each request: IP address, date and time, requested address, HTTP status, transferred bytes, referring page and browser identification. We use these logs to run the service, find errors and defend against attacks (legitimate interest). Logs are deleted after 14 days.

Our pages use no cookies, analytics or tracking. Fonts and icons are served from our own server.

The purchase pages (license.fpga.ch/buy and /upgrade) load Paddle's checkout (Paddle.js from cdn.paddle.com). When you open the checkout, Paddle processes your data as described in section 5 and may use cookies and similar technologies that are necessary for the checkout and fraud prevention; see Paddle's privacy policy.

4. Licenses and the GateLab app

When you buy a license we receive from Paddle and store: your name, email address, Paddle customer and transaction IDs, the product bought, quantity, price, currency and order status. We use this to issue your license, send it to you by email, handle upgrades and refunds, answer support requests and meet accounting obligations (performance of contract, legal obligation).

Your license contains your name, email address, edition, validity and the license ID. It is signed so that GateLab can check it offline.

Activation and license checks. When you activate GateLab and every few days afterwards, the app sends to license.fpga.ch:

  • your license key,
  • a machine identifier: a one-way hash (SHA-256) of your Mac's hardware UUID, from which the UUID itself cannot be recovered,
  • the GateLab version,
  • a random one-time value that protects the answer against replay.

Together with your IP address and the time, we store the activation (machine identifier, app version, first and last check) for as long as the license exists, and a request log that is deleted after 90 days. We use this to enforce the number of Macs per license, detect misuse and help you with activation problems (performance of contract, legitimate interest).

Updates. GateLab checks updates.fpga.ch for new versions (Sparkle). The request contains your IP address and the app version and is logged like any web request (section 3).

Toolchain and packs. When you install or update the toolchain, board packs or IP cores, GateLab downloads them from the addresses listed in its index, for example from GitHub. These providers receive your IP address as for any download and process it under their own policies.

Claude. The Claude integration runs Anthropic's Claude Code under your own Anthropic account. Prompts, project files you share with Claude and Claude's answers are sent directly from your Mac to Anthropic and processed under your agreement with Anthropic and Anthropic's privacy policy. We do not receive them.

GateLab sends no usage statistics or crash reports to us.

5. Payment: Paddle

Paddle.com (Paddle.com Market Ltd, United Kingdom, and its affiliates in the US and Canada) is our reseller and Merchant of Record. Paddle collects and processes your name, email address, billing address, payment details, IP address and transaction data to process the payment, issue invoices, calculate and pay taxes and prevent fraud. Paddle does this as an independent controller. See Paddle's privacy policy.

6. Email

We send license emails and replies to support requests through our email provider
MXroute – USA. They contain your name, email address and license key.

7. Service providers and transfers abroad

We use these providers, who process data on our behalf or as described above:

  • Server hosting: Netcup Germany
  • Email: MXroute, USA
  • Payment: Paddle (United Kingdom, USA, Canada

Where data is transferred to a country without an adequate level of data protection, the
transfer is based on the safeguards provided by law, in particular the standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission and recognised by the Swiss FDPIC.

8. How long we keep data

  • Web server logs and the license request log: up to [90 days].
  • License, activation and order data: as long as the license exists, and order data for the 10 years required by Swiss accounting law (Art. 958f CO).
  • Support emails: as long as needed to handle your request, at most 3 years.

9. Your rights

You can ask us for access to your data, correction, deletion, restriction of processing and a copy in a common format, and you can object to processing based on legitimate interest. Write to support AT fpga DOT ch. Deleting license data means we can no longer verify your license; order data we must keep for accounting stays stored until the retention period ends.

You may lodge a complaint with the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC, www.edoeb.admin.ch) or, if you live in the EU/EEA, with the data protection authority of your country.

10. Security

Connections to our servers are encrypted (HTTPS/TLS). License keys and server answers are signed. Access to license data is restricted to us.

11. Changes

We update this policy when our services change. The date at the top shows the current version.