United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit

____________ FILED October 31, 2023 No. 23-50575 Lyle W. Cayce ____________ Clerk

In re TikTok, Incorporated; TikTok Pte., Limited; ByteDance, Limited; ByteDance, Incorporated,

Petitioners. ______________________________

Petition for Writ of Mandamus to the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas USDC No. 6:21-CV-504 ______________________________

Before Smith, Southwick, and Wilson, Circuit Judges. Jerry E. Smith, Circuit Judge: A writ of mandamus is reserved for extraordinary circumstances. TikTok, Incorporated, and various related entities contend that the district court’s denial of their motion to transfer to the Northern District of Cali- fornia was so patently erroneous that this rare form of relief is warranted. After reviewing the parties’ submissions, the conscientious district court’s opinion, and the factual record, we agree. This case was brought by a Chinese plaintiff, challenges conduct that took place mostly in China and to a lesser extent in California and rises or falls with proof located outside the Western District of Texas. Under our precedent, denying petitioners’ motion to transfer was a clear abuse of discretion, and because petitioners satisfy the other requirements for mandamus relief, their petition for writ of mandamus is granted. Case: 23-50575 Document: 00516951232 Page: 2 Date Filed: 10/31/2023

No. 23-50575

I. TikTok is a popular application that allows users to edit and share short videos. The application depends in part on software that enables video and audio editing by its users. Beijing Meishe Network Technology Co., Ltd. (“Meishe”), is a Chinese company and the owner of several Chinese copy- rights covering the source code for a specific type of video- and audio-editing software. 1 Meishe alleges that one of its former employees disclosed that source code to petitioners, who used the code to develop a video-editing functionality that was then implemented into the current version of TikTok. The development of the video-editing functionality took place in China and was implemented into TikTok in part by a team of engineers located in California. That team of engineers works in petitioners’ Mountain View office, within the Northern District of California. One member of the engineering team works remotely from Irving, Texas, in the Northern District of Texas and 113 miles from the relevant Western District of Texas courthouse in Waco. 2 Petitioners do have a large presence in the Western District of Texas in the form of a 300-person office in Austin. But the Austin office is a busi- ness office that does not perform engineering work, and no employee in the

_____________________ 1 The parties do not dispute at this point in the litigation that the Chinese copy- rights are enforceable in the United States. See 17 U.S.C. § 104(b)(2); Fourth Est. Pub. Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, L.L.C., 139 S. Ct. 881, 891 (2019) (recognizing that Con- gress remo