TikTok Inc. and TikTok’s owner ByteDance Inc., have filed a suit for declaratory judgement of non-infringement of U.S. Patent No 9,691,429 (the ‘429 patent) against Triller Inc. in the United States District Court Northern District of California. This suit comes in response to a previous suit filed by Triller against TikTok for infringing patent ‘429 in the United States District Western District of Texas. TikTok looks to change jurisdiction of the suit and seeks a declaratory judgement that it is not infringing claims 1-19 of the’429 patent, which is a patent on synchronization technology that pairs video with audio tracks.
TikTok and Triller are both technology companies that “provide and support a variety of mobile software applications that enable people around the world to connect with, consume, and create entertainment content.” Both these technology companies offer similar applications that essentially allows users to create short video clips that are often paired with separate audio tracks for entertainment purposes.
In TikTok’s complaint, TikToks states that choice of venue of Texas is improper as Triller “does not have employees or property in Texas” nor has "any regular and established place of business in that forum, and thus is not subject to venue under the Supreme Court’s decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, 581 U.S. ___ , 137 S. Ct. 1514 (2017).” TikTok states that California is the appropriate forum as Triller and TikTok has offices in California and has a number of users within the district. Furthermore, a majority of its distribution partners, e.g., Apple and Google, are also located in California.
For the patent infringement portion of the suit, TikTok gives three examples of how its products do not infringe nor induce infringement upon the ‘429 patent. For the first example, Tiktok states that it products do not perform any synchronization of videos to audio tracks for its users via its application. Second, its product is not a device that comprises of “at least on processor” that is used to synchronize videos to audio at specific intervals. Lastly, its product does not automatically syncs audio tracks to specific intervals in a video in a fashion that would create an synchronized music video. Essentially TikTok claims that it does not provide any automatic synchronization of a user’s video with audio tracks or vice versa through its products.
TikTok request that the court resolve the disagreement by issuing a judicial determination that the plaintiffs and their products neither directly nor indirectly infringed upon the ’429 patent.
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