As of: 23 April 2026

These license terms govern all contracts concluded via the website starks.design between the Licensee and the Licensor concerning the purchase of digital products — including free teaser downloads.

Licensor: Viktor Stark · Starks.Design · Kempten (Allgäu), Germany · license@starks.design

This English version is provided for convenience. In case of discrepancies, the German original prevails.

01 Parties and Scope

These license terms apply to all contracts concluded via the website starks.design between the Licensee and the Licensor concerning the purchase of digital products — including free teaser downloads.

The Licensee becomes a contracting party upon completion of the order or upon requesting a free download. If the Licensee concludes the contract on behalf of a company, they warrant that they are authorised to do so; this confirmation is obtained separately during checkout.

Deviating, conflicting or supplementary general terms and conditions of the Licensee shall not become part of the contract unless the Licensor expressly agrees to their validity in writing.

02 Definitions

Digital Product — All digital files licensed via starks.design: image, video, audio and vector files, templates, project files, brand guides, overlays, LUTs, presets, fonts, typography assets, font packages and comparable digital products as well as any accompanying files and documentation. Product images, preview videos and promotional material on the website are excluded.

License — The right of use granted by the Licensor to the Licensee in accordance with these terms and the chosen license tier. Scope and limits are set out in the license certificate (PDF) and these terms.

License Tier — One of four variants: Personal-Free-Tier, Personal, Commercial or Extended.

Licensee — The buyer as a natural or legal person who has purchased the license. If a license is purchased by an employee, the acquiring company is deemed to be the Licensee.

Commercial Use — Use is considered commercial if at least one of the following conditions is met:

• (a) it is carried out in exchange for payment or other consideration;
• (b) it promotes a business, a product or a service;
• (c) it serves, directly or indirectly, to obtain an economic advantage.

Use is considered private (non-commercial) if it takes place exclusively for personal purposes without any economic connection.

Client Project — A project carried out by the Licensee for a client in which the Digital Product becomes part of the delivered result.

End Client — The Licensee's client in a Client Project.

Deliverable — The finished work delivered to the End Client (video, website, print product, app, presentation, campaign) in which the Digital Product is incorporated as an integral, non-extractable element and which, in scope and character, exceeds the Digital Product itself.

Employees — All natural persons working for the Licensee under an employment, freelance or service contract who can access the Digital Product — including permanent employees, managing directors, working students, mini-jobbers, permanent freelancers and long-term contractors. The relevant number is the number of such persons at the time of purchase. In group structures, only the acquiring legal entity counts; sister or subsidiary companies are considered third parties.

Media Budget — The cumulative net media spend (expenditure on ad placement, excluding production costs) within a coherent campaign in which the Digital Product is used.

03 License Tiers and Selection Criteria

Starks.Design offers four license tiers. The required tier is determined by the intended use and the size of the Licensee's or End Client's company. A single one of the listed criteria is sufficient to require the next higher tier.

3.1 Personal-Free-Tier

Exclusively for free teaser downloads. Use is limited to private, non-commercial purposes. Every teaser download refers to the paid full version of the parent product.

3.2 Personal

For private individuals, solo freelancers and the Licensee's own brand. Use in Client Projects is excluded.

3.3 Commercial

For solo freelancers and companies with up to ten employees. Use in Client Projects is permitted, provided that neither the Licensee nor the End Client triggers any of the Extended criteria (section 3.4).

3.4 Extended

For companies with more than ten employees and high-volume use cases. The Extended license is mandatory as soon as one of the following triggers applies:

• The Licensee has more than ten employees (as defined in section 2).
• The End Client has more than ten employees.
• Use in TV, cinema or streaming advertising.
• Use in a paid-ads campaign with a net media budget exceeding € 50,000.
• Use in print production with a print run exceeding 50,000 copies.
• The Digital Product is integrated into an app, SaaS product or software and becomes a component or feature of that product.

If any of these triggers applies, the Extended license must be chosen at the time of purchase. Subsequent upgrading is governed by section 13.

3.5 Self-Declaration at Checkout

When purchasing a Personal or Commercial license, the Licensee confirms to the best of their knowledge, by checkbox, that the requirements of the chosen tier are met and that none of the Extended triggers applies. This self-declaration is logged in the system (timestamp, IP address). False declarations are governed by section 13.

04 Grant of Rights and Permitted Use

The Licensor grants the Licensee a simple, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, worldwide and perpetual right of use in the purchased Digital Products within the scope of the purchased license tier. The license takes effect upon full payment and successful download.

All rights not expressly granted remain with the Licensor. Granted are, in particular, the rights of reproduction, modification and making available to the public as required for the respective intended purpose within the Deliverable.

4.1 Personal-Free-Tier — permitted

• Private and non-commercial use.
• Use in personal, non-commercial projects (private social media posts, hobby websites, private gifts).

4.2 Personal — permitted

• Unlimited use in private and personal projects: own brand, own portfolio, own website, private social media posts, non-commercial websites.
• Use by the Licensee themselves.

4.3 Commercial — permitted

• Use in Client Projects. The Digital Product may become an integral, non-extractable part of a Deliverable that the End Client receives and continues to use.
• Use by solo freelancers and companies with up to ten employees.
• Use on online video platforms, websites and in non-high-volume paid-ads campaigns (media budget up to € 50,000 net).
• All rights of the Personal license.

4.4 Extended — permitted

• All rights of the Commercial license.
• Use by all employees of the Licensee's company (within the acquiring legal entity).
• Use in TV, cinema and streaming advertising.
• Use in paid-ads campaigns without budget cap.
• Use in print productions without run-size cap.
• Integration into apps, SaaS products and software products.

4.5 Pass-through in the Deliverable (Sublicense)

Upon handing a Deliverable to the End Client, the Licensee grants the End Client a limited sublicense covering only those rights necessary to use the Deliverable. The Digital Product may not be extracted, reproduced separately or used in other projects by the End Client.

4.6 Sharing with Service Providers (all tiers)

The Licensee may temporarily share individual files with service providers contributing to a specific project (e.g. audio mixing, colour correction, pre-press). These service providers may use the Digital Product exclusively for that project and must fully remove access after project completion. Independent use by the service providers is excluded.

4.7 Marking of Files (Watermark and License Number)

(1) The Licensor is entitled to mark every delivered Digital Product with an individual identifier — in particular a license number, visible or invisible watermarks, signed metadata or comparable markers — enabling attribution to the Licensee. The marking serves exclusively to protect the Licensor's rights.

(2) The marking is designed such that it does not interfere with the Licensee's contractual use of the Deliverable. Invisible markers (e.g. steganographic watermarks, metadata entries) are not displayed in the visible Deliverable.

(3) The Licensee shall not remove, alter or obscure the marking. Breaches are sanctioned separately under section 13.

(4) Data processing in the context of this marking is based on the Licensor's legitimate interest in enforcing the granted rights of use pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR. Details on purpose, legal basis, storage period and data-subject rights can be found in the privacy policy at starks.design/legal/datenschutz.

4.8 Marketplace Monitoring

(1) The Licensor is entitled to regularly and automatically check publicly accessible sources — in particular template and asset marketplaces, file-sharing platforms, publicly indexed cloud shares, search-engine results, torrent trackers, social-media platforms and comparable services — for the presence of their Digital Products. For this purpose, automated crawlers may be used and individual files downloaded and compared with the Licensor's own catalogue.

(2) Data processing in the context of this monitoring is based on the Licensor's legitimate interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR in enforcing granted rights of use and in preventing unlawful distribution.

(3) If the Licensor finds that a copy of a Digital Product has been made available outside the licensed scope, they are entitled to obtain the copy, analyse it forensically and take any steps necessary to enforce their rights — including warnings under § 97a German Copyright Act (UrhG), requests for information under § 101 UrhG, injunction proceedings, as well as contractual penalty and damages claims.

(4) Upon the Licensor's request, the Licensee shall reasonably cooperate to trace the path of any copy found outside the licensed scope — in particular by disclosing the persons to whom they have granted contractual access.

05 Prohibited Uses

Regardless of the tier purchased, the following uses are prohibited:

• (a) Resale, redistribution, rental, transfer or sublicensing of the Digital Product as a standalone file or as part of a competing product.
• (b) Marketing of the Digital Product as your own product, on template marketplaces, asset stores, design platforms, sample packs, resource lists, tutorial download bundles or comparable distribution formats.
• (c) Incorporation into your own templates, preset packages, stock libraries or other products from which third parties can extract the Digital Product as a separate file.
• (d) Making available for download to third parties via download portals, file-sharing platforms, FTP servers or cloud shares outside an integrated Deliverable.
• (e) Use within an on-demand service where end users can customise the Deliverable (e.g. print-on-demand, build-your-own applications).
• (f) Copyright appropriation by registering the Digital Product in content recognition or rights management systems (e.g. YouTube Content ID, Facebook Rights Manager, Audible Magic) — even after embedding in your own project.
• (g) Use for text and data mining (§ 44b UrhG), training of machine learning systems, development of generative AI models or comparable automated learning processes — neither alone nor as part of a dataset. The Licensor expressly reserves these uses within the meaning of § 44b (3) UrhG. The reservation is additionally communicated in machine-readable form (robots.txt, ai.txt, meta tags tdm-reservation, noai/noimageai).
• (h) Removal or alteration of copyright notices, watermarks, metadata or the markings applied under section 4.7.
• (i) Reverse engineering or decompilation of file formats aimed at recreating the Digital Product, outside cases mandatorily permitted by law.
• (j) Use of bots for automated mass download.
• (k) Use in unlawful or ethically unacceptable contexts under section 10.

Additional Restrictions per Tier

Personal-Free-Tier and Personal:

• Use in Client Projects.
• Use in paid-ads campaigns and commercial advertising.
• Sharing with third parties outside the service-provider case governed by section 4.6.

Commercial:

• Use by companies with more than ten employees.
• Use for End Clients with more than ten employees.
• Use in TV, cinema or streaming advertising.
• Paid-ads campaigns with a media budget above € 50,000 net.
• Print productions with a run above 50,000 copies.
• Integration into apps, SaaS or software products.

Extended:

• Pass-through of the raw file to End Clients — only the finished Deliverable may be handed over.
• Sharing with companies outside the acquiring legal entity (in particular sister and subsidiary companies).

06 Ownership and Copyright

All rights in the Digital Product, including copyrights, trademarks and other industrial property rights, remain with Viktor Stark / Starks.Design. With the license, the Licensee exclusively acquires the rights of use set out in section 4. No transfer of ownership takes place.

The Licensee shall not claim any copyright or comparable rights in the Digital Product or its components — not even in modified versions or after incorporation into a Deliverable.

The license becomes effective only upon full payment. Until payment is received, no right of use exists.

07 Payment, Right of Withdrawal and Order Confirmation

Prices are those shown on the respective product page. Payments are processed via Stripe and are due immediately upon placing the order.

No right of withdrawal for digital content. For digital products not delivered on a physical medium, the right of withdrawal expires prematurely pursuant to § 356 (5) German Civil Code (BGB) once the Licensor has begun performance after the Licensee has

• (i) expressly agreed that the Licensor starts performing the contract before expiry of the withdrawal period, and
• (ii) confirmed their knowledge that they lose their right of withdrawal with the start of performance.

This dual declaration is obtained at checkout via two separate, empty checkboxes. Both checkboxes must be actively ticked. The confirmation is logged together with timestamp, IP address, user agent and a hash of the withdrawal instruction valid at that time.

For entrepreneurs within the meaning of § 14 BGB, no statutory right of withdrawal applies in any event.

Refunds on the grounds of non-use, subsequent dissatisfaction or misjudgement of the required license tier are excluded. In the event of technical defects, the Licensee may contact help@starks.design; statutory warranty rights remain unaffected.

Order confirmation (§ 312f BGB). After the contract is concluded, the Licensee receives an order confirmation by email on a durable medium. It contains the license terms, the withdrawal instruction valid at the time of purchase, the payment receipt and the confirmation of consent under paragraph 2 pursuant to § 312f (3) BGB.

7.1 Chargebacks and Unjustified Disputes

If the Licensee initiates a chargeback of the purchase price with their payment service provider (credit-card issuer, PayPal, bank) without being entitled to a refund by law or contract — in particular after the right of withdrawal under § 356 (5) BGB has expired and the contractual performance has been rendered — they owe the Licensor:

• (a) the original purchase price;
• (b) a flat-rate processing fee of € 40.00 to compensate the administrative effort for review, evidence preparation and dispute handling; the Licensee is free to prove a lower actual damage;
• (c) any chargeback fee billed to the Licensor by the payment service provider;
• (d) the costs of legal representation under the German Lawyers' Fees Act (RVG), insofar as the chargeback was caused culpably.

By initiating the unjustified chargeback, the Licensee defaults without further notice (§ 286 (2) No. 4 BGB). The contractual penalties under section 13.2 remain unaffected if the chargeback coincides with a further breach of contract (e.g. failure to delete the file).

In justified cases — in particular technical defects, duplicate purchase or unauthorised transaction — this flat fee does not apply. This clause does not deter consumers from initiating justified chargebacks.

08 Warranty

For consumers (§ 13 BGB): Statutory warranty rights under §§ 327 et seq. BGB for digital products apply. The Licensor owes the contractually agreed and objectively required quality of the Digital Product at the time of provision. There is no ongoing update obligation for one-off downloads.

For entrepreneurs (§ 14 BGB): The Digital Product is provided "as is". The Licensor warrants that they are entitled to grant the license and that the Digital Product, upon delivery, is free of third-party rights preventing its use. No further warranty is given for fitness for a particular purpose, uninterrupted availability of downloads or compatibility with a specific software version. The warranty period for entrepreneurs is one year from provision. In the event of defects, the Licensor shall, at their option, provide supplementary performance by repair or replacement. If supplementary performance fails twice, the Licensee may withdraw from the contract or reduce the price.

Defects must be notified in text form without undue delay upon discovery.

For Digital Products provided free of charge (Personal-Free-Tier), § 524 BGB applies by analogy: the Licensor is liable only for maliciously concealed defects and assumes no further warranty.

09 Limitation of Liability

The Licensor has unlimited liability for damages arising from injury to life, body or health and for damages based on intent or gross negligence. Liability under the German Product Liability Act (ProdHaftG) remains unaffected.

In the case of slightly negligent breach of essential contractual obligations (cardinal duties), liability is limited to the damage that was foreseeable and typical at the time the contract was concluded. Cardinal duties are those whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose compliance the Licensee can typically rely.

Otherwise, liability for slightly negligent breaches is excluded. In particular, no liability is assumed for loss of profit, indirect damages, consequential damages, data loss or business interruption, to the extent permitted by law.

For Digital Products provided free of charge, the Licensor is liable only for intent and gross negligence by analogy to § 521 BGB.

10 Prohibition of Unlawful and Unethical Use

The Digital Product may not be used in connection with:

• Hate, incitement and glorification of violence within the meaning of §§ 130, 131 German Criminal Code (StGB).
• Pornographic content or content endangering minors within the meaning of the German Youth Protection Act.
• Content that promotes or instructs in unlawful acts.
• Content that infringes personal rights, copyrights or trademarks of third parties.
• Misleading advertising under the German Act against Unfair Competition (UWG) and deceptive business practices.
• Content whose core message runs counter to the public standing of the Starks.Design brand.

Breaches are subject to section 13.

11 Indemnification (B2B)

The Licensee, as an entrepreneur, shall indemnify the Licensor against justified third-party claims arising from any contractual or unlawful use of the Digital Product by the Licensee or by persons to whom the Licensee has granted access — including reasonable costs of legal defence. The indemnification obligation lapses to the extent that the Licensee is not responsible for the breach, or where the breach is based on an unclear or incomplete license provision.

The Licensor shall inform the Licensee of any such claims without undue delay and give them the opportunity to respond.

This indemnification clause does not apply to consumers (§ 13 BGB).

12 Right to Amend

The Licensor may amend these license terms with effect for the future, provided there is a valid reason (in particular changes in the legal situation, new case law or the introduction of additional license tiers). Amendments will be announced to the Licensee in text form no later than six weeks before they take effect. If the Licensee does not object within six weeks of receipt of the notification, the amendments are deemed approved. The notification will separately point out the deemed consent and the right of objection.

Previously purchased licenses remain unaffected by amendments — amendments apply exclusively to future purchases.

13 Breach and Consequences

13.1 Upgrade in Case of False Declaration

If it turns out that the Licensee, upon purchasing a Personal or Commercial license, made an incorrect self-declaration under section 3.5 and that in fact an Extended trigger applied at the time of purchase, the Licensee is obliged to upgrade the license. The Licensor will issue an upgrade invoice for the difference to the required tier, based on the price applicable at the time of purchase. The upgrade invoice is due within 14 days of receipt.

If the Licensee fails to make this payment after a reminder and a reasonable additional grace period (as a rule, a further 14 days), the Licensor is entitled to terminate the license agreement extraordinarily with effect for the future. Deliverables completed and handed over before termination may continue to be used in their existing form; any new incorporation of the Digital Product into further projects is excluded after termination.

13.2 Contractual Penalty for Resale or Circumvention

(1) Basis of assessment. For culpable breaches of the distribution and marketing prohibitions under section 5 (a) to (g) and of the marking and monitoring obligations under sections 4.7 and 4.8, the Licensee owes the Licensor a contractual penalty whose amount depends on severity, repetition and economic impact of the breach. The decisive reference price is the list price of the Extended license of the Digital Product concerned applicable at the time of the breach. If no Extended license exists for the product concerned at that time, the highest license price applicable at the time of purchase applies.

(2) Tier 1 — first breach without demonstrable commercial damage. For a first-time, non-commercial breach — in particular sharing a file with individuals in the private sphere or using it in a single project outside the license tier — the contractual penalty amounts to three times the reference price, at least € 1,500. The Licensee has the opportunity to cease the breach within 14 days of receipt of a warning letter and to submit a criminal-penalty-enforced cease-and-desist declaration.

(3) Tier 2 — repeat breach or multiple distribution. For a further breach following a prior warning letter, or for a single breach involving distribution to more than five third parties, availability in closed groups (Discord, Telegram channels, internal company pools) or in cloud shares, the contractual penalty amounts to five times the reference price, at least € 3,500.

(4) Tier 3 — commercial resale, marketing or AI training. For breaches of a demonstrably commercial nature — in particular resale on marketplaces, marketing as your own product, integration into preset or template bundles, use as training data for machine-learning models, or commercial distribution via download portals — the contractual penalty amounts to ten times the reference price, at least € 7,500 per affected Digital Product. Each independently usable copy counts as a separate breach.

(5) Cap to preserve enforceability. The contractual penalty per individual case is capped at € 25,000, unless the Licensor can prove a specifically quantifiable higher damage; in that case, the cap does not apply. The cap serves to preserve proportionality under § 307 BGB and the enforceability of the clause in German legal practice.

(6) B2B and B2C application. Vis-à-vis entrepreneurs (§ 14 BGB), tiers 1 through 3 apply without restriction. Vis-à-vis consumers (§ 13 BGB), tiers 1 and 2 apply only if the breach is connected with at least occasional commercial or self-employed activity. Tier 3 applies to consumers only in the case of evident intent to generate profit. Mandatory consumer protection rights remain unaffected.

(7) Reservation of damages. Any damage claims exceeding the contractual penalty remain unaffected. The contractual penalty is offset against actually proven damages. The Licensee is free to prove that a smaller damage, or no damage, has occurred.

(8) Clarification for multiple breaches. Where uniform actions affect multiple products, the contractual penalty is calculated per affected Digital Product. Where consecutive, separable actions occur, the penalty is calculated per action. The overall sum per individual case remains capped per paragraph 5.

(9) Separate contractual penalty for tampering with markings. The culpable removal, alteration or obscuring of the license number, watermarks or signed metadata pursuant to section 4.7 qualifies as an independent breach and is sanctioned with a contractual penalty of € 5,000 per tampered file, regardless of any further demonstrated distribution. The Licensee is free to prove non-culpable conduct (e.g. technical fault by a service provider).

(10) Litigation and out-of-court enforcement costs. In the event of judicial or extrajudicial enforcement of the claims under this section, the losing Licensee bears the statutory costs of enforcement. For a lawyer's activity within the scope of a justified warning letter under § 97a UrhG, the German Lawyers' Fees Act (RVG) applies; the amount in dispute is determined by the economic interest in injunction and damages, but at least by the amount of the contractual penalty.

13.3 Sanction for Copyright Appropriation

If the Licensor proves that the Licensee has registered the Digital Product or parts thereof in a content recognition or rights management system (e.g. YouTube Content ID, Facebook Rights Manager, Audible Magic) contrary to section 5 (f), section 13.2 paragraph 4 (tier 3) applies accordingly. The Licensor is additionally entitled to demand written confirmation of deregistration from the Licensee within seven days.

13.4 Enforcement Rights under the German Copyright Act

Unaffected by the contractual penalties under section 13.2 remain the Licensor's statutory claims under the German Copyright Act, in particular:

• the claim for injunction and damages under § 97 UrhG;
• the right to information under § 101 UrhG (also vis-à-vis platform operators and hosting providers, where an infringement of commercial scale exists);
• the claim for reimbursement of warning-letter costs under § 97a UrhG;
• the possibility of criminal charges under §§ 106, 108a UrhG in case of commercial infringement.

13.5 Extraordinary Termination

The Licensor is entitled to terminate the license extraordinarily with immediate effect in the event of material breaches — in particular unlawful use under section 10, breaches of the resale and AI-training prohibitions under section 5, tampering with markings under section 4.7, or non-payment of an upgrade invoice under section 13.1 after a fruitless grace period.

14 Term and Termination

The license begins with the successful download of the Digital Product and runs for an unlimited period. It ends only by termination pursuant to section 13.

After termination, the Licensee is obliged to delete all copies of the Digital Product from all data carriers, cloud storage and systems. Deliverables already produced and handed over before termination may continue to be used in their existing form — however, any new incorporation of the Digital Product into new projects is excluded.

15 Assignment and Transfer

The rights under this license are non-transferable. Any assignment, sublicensing or transfer to third parties — including in the context of a sale of the business or a merger — requires the prior written consent of the Licensor. Consent will not be refused without objective reason.

16 Data Protection

The Licensor processes the personal data required for contract execution (name, email address, where applicable company name and VAT ID) on the basis of Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR (performance of contract). This data is included in the license certificate (PDF) to uniquely assign the license to a specific Licensee.

For evidence preservation in chargebacks and withdrawal disputes, IP address, user agent, timestamps of consent declarations and a hash of the withdrawal instruction are additionally logged on the basis of Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (legitimate interest).

Further details on data processing, third-party recipients (Stripe, Supabase, Resend, AWS S3), retention periods (generally three years from contract conclusion, up to ten years in case of statutory retention duties) and data-subject rights can be found in the privacy policy at starks.design/legal/datenschutz.

16.1 Fraud Prevention via Stripe Radar

To prevent payment fraud, the Licensor uses the "Stripe Radar" service provided by Stripe Payments Europe Limited. During the order process, Stripe Radar analyses technical features of the transaction (including IP address, device information, card data) and assesses the fraud risk automatically. In the case of elevated risk, the Licensor may decline or postpone the transaction.

Legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (legitimate interest in preventing payment fraud). Where the automated decision leads to a rejection having legal effect for the Licensee, the Licensee has the right to manual review, to state their point of view and to contest the decision (Art. 22 (3) GDPR). Such requests may be sent to help@starks.design.

Further information on data processing by Stripe can be found in the privacy policy and at stripe.com/privacy.

17 Severability Clause

Should individual provisions of this contract be or become invalid or unenforceable, the validity of the remainder of the contract shall remain unaffected.

18 Applicable Law and Jurisdiction

The laws of the Federal Republic of Germany apply to the exclusion of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and to the exclusion of the conflict-of-laws rules of private international law.

If the Licensee is a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a public-law special fund, or has no general place of jurisdiction in Germany, the exclusive place of jurisdiction is Kempten (Allgäu), Germany — the Kempten Local Court or the Kempten Regional Court have jurisdiction.

Vis-à-vis consumers (§ 13 BGB), the statutory rules on jurisdiction and mandatory consumer law of the country of habitual residence apply (Art. 6 Rome I Regulation, Art. 17–19 Brussels I bis Regulation, § 29c ZPO). In particular, consumers may enforce their rights at their general place of jurisdiction.

For questions on these license terms, please contact license@starks.design.