On Wednesday, July 29, 2020, Triller, Inc. sued TikTok, Inc. and its parent company, ByteDance Ltd., in the U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas, over patent infringement claims. The complaint alleges that TikTok and ByteDance infringe on Triller’s U.S. Patent No. 9,691,429 for “[s]ystems and methods for creating music videos synchronized with an audio track.”
Triller develops a social video platform application for iOS and Android. TikTok and ByteDance develop a competing application, TikTok, “that provide[s] TikTok subscribers with social video platform services to create and distribute music videos.” The complaint quotes TikTok’s description from Apple’s App Store as “THE destination for mobile videos. . . [TikTok] makes it easy for you to discover and create your own original videos by providing easy-to-use tools to view and capture your daily moments.” The TikTok application has over 189 million installs in the United States, and downloads of TikTok have exceeded 2 billion worldwide.
Triller’s complaint alleges that the TikTok application infringes, at least, claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the patent in question. Claim 1 of the patent provides for “selecting an audio track,” “capturing a plurality of video takes,” “synchronizing each video take,” “playing. . . the selected audio track at substantially the same time,” and “creating a music video.” Claim 3 of the patent provides “wherein the plurality of video takes are captured using a user device.” Claim 4 of the patent provides for “[t]he method of claim 3, wherein the user devices comprises at least one image capturing component.” Claim 5 of the patent provides for “extracting portions of. . . video takes to be used for sections of the selected audio track.” Claim 6 of the patent provides “wherein the audio track is stored on at least one of: a user device; a music server; and an external device.” Finally, claim 7 of the patent provides for “playing the selected audio track while each video take of the plurality of video takes is captured.”
The complaint requests relief in the form of monetary damages and an entry of an injunction against TikTok and ByteDance against further infringement of the patent in question.
Additional Reading
Triller sues TikTok over patent infringement, TechCrunch (July 30, 2020)
Triller, Inc. v. ByteDance Ltd. et al (Case No. 6:2020cv00693)