ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has asked a US appeals court for additional time to work out a potential sale of its operations in the US, citing a lack of communication from the American government ahead of its 12 November deadline to ban the app. The petition was filed in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The company said the US government’s decision to force a TikTok sale was "arbitrary and capricious" and denied the company due process under the law. The company said it had been in extensive discussions with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US to address its concerns but that feedback had essentially stopped in recent weeks, even as the deadline approached.
The US has argued that it is trying to prevent data on American TikTok users from being shared with China’s authoritarian government, which TikTok says it would never do. President Donald Trump issued an executive order in August stating that TikTok must be sold to an American company or it would be banned in the US.
Under a preliminary deal reached in September, Oracle and Walmart would take a combined 20 percent in TikTok Global, a new US-based company that would run the global service. Among the major sticking points in the continuing negotiations is the size of the stake that ByteDance will get to keep in TikTok, people familiar with the matter said.
TikTok said talks to complete that deal are continuing. "We remain committed to working with the administration—as we have all along—to resolve the issues it has raised, but our legal challenge today is a protection to ensure these discussions can take place," a TikTok spokesperson said.
A federal judge in Philadelphia previously granted a preliminary injunction against the 12 November order, in a suit brought by three TikTok stars.
