U.S. court agrees to expedite government TikTok app store ban appeal

z The TikTok logo is pictured outside the company’s U.S. head office in Culver City, California, U.S., Sept. 15, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Blake

WASHINGTON  – A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday agreed to fast-track a Justice Department appeal of a ruling blocking the government from banning new TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington issued a preliminary injunction on Sept. 27 that barred the U.S. Commerce Department from ordering Apple Inc <AAPL.O> and Alphabet Inc’s Google <GOOGL.O> app stores to remove the Chinese-owned short video-sharing app for download by new users.

A U.S. appeals court in Washington said all briefs are due by Nov. 12 with oral arguments to follow. The government’s opening brief is due on Friday.

Nichols plans to hold a Nov. 4 hearing on whether to allow the U.S. government to bar transactions with TikTok that it has warned would effectively ban the app’s use in the United States. Those restrictions are set to take effect on Nov. 12.

On Wednesday, TikTok sought a preliminary injunction to block those restrictions, disclosing that U.S. TikTok users on average send 80 million direct messages and share 46 million videos a day on the app.

The company said the U.S. government has produced “no evidence that the TikTok source code has ever been compromised, shared or used for nefarious purposes; no evidence that the Chinese government has ever obtained access to any TikTok user data, let alone that of U.S. users; and no evidence that TikTok’s recommendation engine systematically biases Chinese (or any other) political interest.”

China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok, has been under pressure to sell the popular app. The White House contends that TikTok poses national security concerns as personal data collected on 100 million Americans who use the app could be obtained by China’s government. Any deal will need to be reviewed by the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), but people briefed on the matter do not expect any final agreement before the election.

Negotiations are underway for Walmart Inc <WMT.N> and Oracle Corp <ORCL.N> to take stakes in a new company, TikTok Global, that would oversee U.S. operations.

Key terms of the deal, including who will have majority ownership, are in dispute.

A federal judge in San Francisco blocked similar restrictions from taking effect that would bar the use of Tencent Holding’s <0700.HK> WeChat. A hearing is set for Thursday on the government’s request to immediately implement the ban on the Chinese messaging app.