WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court said
on Wednesday it will hear oral arguments on Dec. 14 on the
government's appeal of an order that blocked a ban on Apple Inc
and Alphabets Google offering TikTok for
download in U.S. app stores.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington on Sept. 27
blocked the Commerce Department order hours before it was to
prohibit new downloads of the Chinese-owned short video-sharing
app.
The appeals panel consists of Judge Judith Rogers, Patricia
Millett and Robert Wilkins. All three were nominated by previous
Democratic presidents.
The Trump administration last week extended to Friday a
deadline for Chinese TikTok parent ByteDance to sell TikTok's
U.S. assets. The Trump administration contends TikTok poses
national security concerns as the personal data of U.S. users
could be obtained by Chinas government. TikTok, which has over
100 million U.S. users, denies the allegation.
The administration previously granted ByteDance a 15-day
extension of the order issued in August. President Donald Trump
on Aug. 14 directed ByteDance to divest the app's U.S. assets
within 90 days.
Under pressure from the U.S. government, ByteDance has been
in talks for months to finalize a deal with Walmart Inc and
Oracle Corp to shift TikToks U.S. assets into a new entity.
ByteDance made a new proposal aimed at addressing the U.S.
governments concerns, Reuters reported last week.
The U.S. Treasury said last week the extension was granted
to review a recently received "revised submission."
ByteDance made the proposal after disclosing on Nov. 10 that
it submitted four prior proposals, including one in November,
that sought to address U.S. concerns by "creating a new entity,
wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing U.S. investors in
ByteDance, that would be responsible for handling TikToks U.S.
user data and content moderation."
U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone on Oct. 30 blocked
another aspect of a Commerce Department order scheduled to take
effect Nov. 12 that would have effectively barred TikTok from
operating in the United States.
Beetlestone enjoined the agency from barring data hosting
within the United States for TikTok, content delivery services
and other technical transactions.
(Reporting by David Shepardson;
Editing by Chris Reese and Dan Grebler)