US gov’t appeals judge’s ruling that blocked ban on TikTok downloads

FILE PHOTO: TikTok’s logo is displayed on the smartphone while standing on the U.S. flag in this illustration picture taken, November 8, 2019. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government said in a court filing on Thursday it was appealing a judge’s ruling that prevented it from prohibiting new downloads of the Chinese-owned short video-sharing app TikTok.

The Justice Department said it appealed the order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

In late September, a U.S. judge temporarily blocked a Trump administration order that was set to bar Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google from offering new TikTok downloads.

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 also still need to be reviewed by the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

Negotiations are under way for Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to take stakes in a new company, TikTok Global, that would oversee U.S. operations.

But key terms of the deal – including who will have majority ownership – are in dispute. ByteDance has also said any deal will need to be approved by China. Beijing has revised its list of technologies subject to export bans in a way that gives it a say over any TikTok deal.