Panic builds over bankrupt Spirit’s looming data sale to Google

Doug Kreuzkamp was shocked when news outlets reported that Google won an auction to buy a huge amount of operational data as part of Spirit Airlines’ bankruptcy proceedings.

Kreuzkamp founded a startup called Springshot in 2011, which created a widely used proprietary platform that helps humans and AI systems improve airline efficiency and quickly solve logistics problems so flights can stay on time and airlines can operate as smoothly as possible. Hundreds of airports use it globally.

Springshot powered Spirit’s technology stack for the last three years, right up to the “very last flight,” Kreuzkamp told Ars. Yet his company got no notice when Spirit prepared to auction off a massive dataset that he thinks likely improperly includes a substantial amount of data and intellectual property (IP) that Springshot owns—not Spirit.

In a limited objection filed last month, Springshot argued that Spirit’s sale agreement does not make it clear what data is being sold. It only vaguely references categories of data that would possibly rope in Springshot data, including “productivity and collaboration data,” “core business systems and business application data,” and “workflow and process data.”

“This expansive definition does nothing to differentiate between Springshot’s intellectual property that exists within Spirit’s data repositories and systems, but Spirit does not own, and Spirit data that it actually owns and has the capacity to sell,” Springshot argued.

Springshot urged the court to pause Spirit’s data sale until a transparent forensic process establishes that none of the data Google is grabbing is actually owned by third parties.

If the bankruptcy court does not “pump the brakes,” it risks sanctioning an “unauthorized acquisition and use of trade secrets” that could doom startups, Springshot alleged. In an email to Ars, Springshot summarized its fears as the court possibly creating “a precedent where startups see massive amounts of IP transferred to the world’s richest and most monopolistic companies via bankruptcy courts.”