ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, asked the federal appeals court in Washington to intervene to prevent the US government from requiring it to sell the popular video-sharing app or face a ban in America, reported Bloomberg.
The Beijing-based company is seeking to block an order forcing it to sell by Thursday its most important international business, a viral video service with upwards of 100 million users in the US. The Trump administration issued an executive order banning TikTok in the US on national security grounds, and demanded the Chinese company cede control of TikTok to American investors.
A deal was eventually struck to sell about 20% of a new TikTok entity to Oracle and Walmart, but that agreement is now in limbo after Joe Biden won the US presidential election and a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s ban. A US security panel had previously set a Nov. 12 deadline for TikTok to finalize an accord, and TikTok has requested a 30-day extension to keep working toward a solution that would avert a full sale of TikTok as required in the order, said Bloomberg.
Facing the Thursday deadline set by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, TikTok said, it had no choice but to turn to the appeals court “to defend our rights and those of our more than 1,500 employees in the US.”
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