Bala Cynwyd-based Susquehanna International Group has settled a lawsuit from former contractors who claimed they were entitled to part of the firm’s sizable TikTok stake, writes Jesse Bunch for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The agreement was announced on Monday by lawyers for Susquehanna International Group and the plaintiffs, Peter Tan and Zhang Hao, in the Montgomery County courtroom where both parties presented their case before a jury last week.
“There’s not really much I can say, other than we’re pleased that the case was resolved,” said Jacob Buchdahl, lead attorney for the plaintiffs with the law firm Susman Godfrey L.L.P.
Tan and Zhang are former contractors who facilitated connections between the Montgomery County firm and venture capital opportunities in China throughout the mid-2000s. They alleged that the technology they introduced to the firm, which powered a digital real estate company, Kuxun, was later the foundation of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance.
Susquehanna owns approximately 15 percent of ByteDance. Today, TikTok ranks among the most popular apps in America, with over 130 million monthly users.
Susquehanna’s lawyers denied the allegations, minimizing any similarities between Kuxun’s search engine technology and the algorithm used by ByteDance across several popular applications.
Read more about Susquehanna International Group in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
