A bankruptcy court judge today approved Verified Identity Pass' proposed sale to Alclear, but placed restrictions on immediate access to customer data and required the buyer to grant free membership to Clear members who were active when VIP folded its Registered Traveler program last summer.
Under the terms of the judge's order today, the buyer would have to give former Clear members 30 days to opt out of any relaunched Registered Traveler program, in which case their biometric data would be destroyed.
"Any customer who does not respond by the denial deadline will be deemed to have consented to the transfer of the customer data to the buyer," court documents said. The Clear program had more than 180,000 active members when it shut down last June, court documents show.
The judge also ordered that former members who give permission to remain in the program "will receive the service without cost for a number of months equal to the number of months that remain on the transferred customer's original membership agreement contract."
After the termination of Alclear's original asset purchase agreement last week, second-highest bidder Henry Inc. was next in line to purchase the assets
(BTNonline, April 13).
Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly indicated the bankruptcy court judge cleared the asset sale to Henry Inc., not Alclear.