Chinese short-video app TikTok on Thursday averted a ban in the US after the government announced it would delay the ban, in order to comply with a court order in favor of the application, AFP reported. US President Donald Trump’s administration had set a November 12 deadline for TikTok’s owner ByteDance to divest from all its operations in the country.

ByteDance is a Chinese IT company headquartered in capital Beijing.

The US Commerce Department said on Thursday it was holding off due to an injunction by a federal judge issued on October 30.

“The department is complying with the terms of this order,” it said in a statement, adding that the ban “has been enjoined and will not go into effect pending further legal developments.”

A federal court in Pennsylvania on October 30 blocked the Trump administration from carrying out the ban, in a lawsuit filed by the “creators” on TikTok.

The government on Thursday appealed the judge’s decision.

TikTok has filed a separate lawsuit in a court in Washington DC. The court had last month blocked the US government from enforcing a ban on new downloads of the app.

TikTok parent firm ByteDance had been given until Thursday to restructure ownership of the app in the United States to address national security concerns, but it filed a petition in a Washington court this week asking for a delay.

The company said in a Tuesday statement that it had asked the government for a 30-day extension because of “continual new requests and no clarity on whether our proposed solutions would be accepted,” but it was not granted.

The Trump administration has been seeking to transfer ownership of TikTok to an American business to allay security concerns, but no deal has been finalized.

ByteDance and TikTok have proposed creating a new company with IT firm Oracle as a technology partner and retail giant Walmart as a business partner.

There are over 100 million users of TikTok in the US.

Although TikTok issued no statement on the latest development, it did comment on Pennsylvania court’s October 30 injunction.

It said it was “deeply moved by the outpouring of support from our creators, who have worked to protect their rights to expression, their careers, and to helping small businesses, particularly during the pandemic.”