IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
BEIJING MEISHE )
NETWORK TECH. )
CO., LTD., )
Plaintiff )
v. )
TIKTOK, INC., )
Defendant )
Complaint
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1. Plaintiff, Beijing Meishe Network Technology Co., Ltd. (“Meishe”), is a Chinese limited-liability company with its principal place of business in Beijing. It maintains a 300-person office in Austin, Texas; this is a business and marketing office that does not engage in or perform engineering work, does not employee any engineers, and does not work with source code.
2. Defendant, TikTok, Inc. (“TikTok”), is a Chinese corporation with its principal place of business in Beijing. It employs a team of engineers in an office in Mountain View, California. One engineer works remotely, living and working in Irving, Texas. The engineers in the Mountain View office handle all implementation of all technology for TikTok’s app and social-media site.
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7. Meishe owns several Chinese copyrights covering the source code for certain video- and audio-editing software.
8. A former Meishe employee disclosed the Meishe’s source code to defendant. Defendant used the improperly disclosed code to design and develop video- and audio-editing functionality in China. Defendant’s engineering team in Mountain View, California implemented the new functionality (which relied on the infringing source code) into the TikTok application. That functionality became part of the TikTok social-media site, used all over the United States and all over the world.
9. The source code used by TikTok in developing and implementing its editing functionality is virtually identical to Meishe’s copyrighted source code, as a comparison of the codes by knowledgeable engineers will reveal.
10. The source code disclosed to TikTok constitutes a protected trade secret, unlawfully provided to TikTok and therefore unlawfully used. Knowledgeable engineers can testify to the nature and secretness of the code.
Count One
Violation of Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 501
Count Two
Violation of State Trade Secretes
Count Three
Conversion (State Law)
TikTok moves to transfer the case to the Northern District of California. In resolving the motion, you have the following information:
• Irving, TX is in the Northern District of Texas.
• Mountain View, CA is in the Northern District of California.
• Irving, TX is 113 miles from the courthouse for the Western District of Texas.
• The court has not resolved whether Texas or California law governs the state law claims. But the laws of conversion and trade secrets in Texas and California are substantially similar. Any differences do not involve complex or unique aspects of state law.
• As of December 31, 2023, the Western District of Texas had 10,672 pending cases (civil and criminal); the average time from filing to disposition for all civil cases was 7.3 months; the average time from filing to trial (for civil cases that reach trial) is 28.3 months; and 8.5 % of its cases were more than three years old.
• As of December 31, 2023, the Northern District of California had 14, 237 pending cases (civil and criminal); the average time from filing to disposition for all civil cases was 6.9 months; and the average time from filing to trial (for civil cases that reach trial) is 48.9 months; and 21.7 % of its pending civil cases were more than three years old.
• To the extent this answer requires any personal-jurisdiction analysis, do only the Shoe analysis; do not worry about the preliminaries.
• TikTok concedes that the Western District of Texas is not its "home" in any sense.
For the court, resolve the motion.
