Start by trimming cow hooves

In the tea room.

Lawyer Daniel Boyce was standing on the spot, quietly admiring the many pieces of fine porcelain with dragon patterns on the antique shelves.

Although he didn't know the specific value of these antiques, the fact that the porcelain bottles and jars in front of him could be solemnly placed behind bulletproof glass by Su Rui and placed in the most conspicuous position in the tea room was enough to explain a lot of problems.

Having been a lawyer for most of his life and trying to work in federal courts for more than ten years, lawyer Daniel Boyce is 62 years old. He is still very energetic. His hair is dyed black. At first glance, he looks like he is in his forties or fifties. I'm about the same age, and I usually like to take care of myself and exercise.

After meeting Suri.

This top corporate legal consultant said politely in a relaxed tone:

"I've met many rich people, but their tastes are not as good as yours. It's such a wonderful enjoyment to have such a tea room where you can see trees and grass outside the window."

Suri pressed the password to open the safe and said with a smile:

"Then you should try it and drink tea from a black-glazed tea cup worth 600,000 US dollars. It has a history of hundreds of years. Please be careful, because it is difficult to buy it again."

Attorney Daniel Boyce said:

"Hearing what you said, I suddenly became very interested. I seemed to have seen a piece of news before, saying that you owned a teacup worth US$2.8 million."

"Yes, it is a tea cup with azure glaze from Ru Kiln in the Northern Song Dynasty, but it is my own master cup. It used to be worth 2.8 million U.S. dollars, but now it has probably increased to about 7 million U.S. dollars."

Suri just finished speaking.

Attorney Daniel Boyce shrugged and replied:

"Although I am extremely interested in this topic, I charge $1,800 per hour. The billing has already started when I met you. Are you sure you want to talk about this?"

Su Rui pretended to look at his watch and said calmly:

"It doesn't matter. My hourly income is enough to pay for this fee. But for the sake of me treating you to tea, I'd better give you a discount."

"If nothing else happens, I should become your law firm's largest client in the future. Many forces don't want to see me develop so smoothly. Whether S Electric Vehicles or other companies, they may be in trouble in the future."

"The orders you receive from me are enough to make you one of the richest lawyers in the United States. Isn't it too much to ask for a discount?"

".Of course that's no problem."

When lawyer Daniel Boyce saw Suri say this, he immediately understood that he was well aware of the current situation.

The rise of an emerging giant will inevitably have a serious impact on other vested interests.

The success of projects such as Tweet and TikTok has actually had a serious impact on Facebook, reducing its potential value in the minds of investors and causing the stock price to rise less than expected.

If Su Rui hadn't been familiar with "The Way of the World" and roped in a group of Facebook's major shareholders in advance to jointly finance the Tweet project, the two parties might have fought long ago.

Projects such as Caishen Capital and S Electric Vehicle Company have also adopted similar practices, attracting asset management oligarchs, oil businessmen, and shareholders of traditional automobile companies to become partners, thereby minimizing the negative impact with great difficulty.

After lawyer Daniel Boyce took his seat, he asked:

"I find that you always like to go head-to-head with several major media giants. This is not your style. Why can't you try to reconcile and let them become TikTok partners?"

“In this way, we can not only save litigation expenses, but also save several years and create a good development environment.”

"Based on your shareholding ratio in TikTok, you can completely release 20% or more of your shares. This will have no impact on your voice and control."

"If it's because they have had conflicts with you, then you don't need to mind too much. I will try my best to help you get a financing valuation that is satisfactory to both parties. For example, how about a valuation of US$3 billion?"

No need to guess.

Attorney Daniel Boyce has apparently been in contact with some people and is trying to negotiate with Suri as a lobbyist.

This is not to say that lawyer Daniel Boyce, with his salary from Suri, turned his elbows outward and spoke to outsiders.

But the "gangster-style lawsuit" is too troublesome and is intended to slow down the expansion of TikTok. When there are other better options, choosing settlement may not be a good thing that everyone is happy with.

Suri understood what the other party meant.

Since it chooses to use rogue lawsuits to prevent the rise of TikTok, there must be more than one or two related lawsuits. In fact, TikTok’s legal department has recently received more than a dozen subpoenas for compensation in civil lawsuits, and without exception, they all come with punitive damages clauses. .

For example, in Florida, a drug addict died of a drug overdose. Her parents insisted that she was influenced by TikTok. They found the contact information of the seller in the comment area of ​​a short video, hoping to receive a total of 30 million US dollars in punitive damages. .

According to the information Su Rui received, the parents of the dead poisonous insect had severed ties with their daughter for several years.

If there was no one behind this incident, he would definitely not believe that it was just a huge coincidence that so many people were launching high-cost lawsuits for various reasons.

Although TikTok can easily win many cases, it has had a serious negative impact on the company's image and reputation.

Moreover, TikTok is in the social platform business, and related lawsuits will only continue to flow in the future. Once a trend forms, it will attract more unreasonable lawsuits, so this move is called "rogue litigation."

It may cost just millions of dollars to seriously slow down the pace of TikTok, resulting in direct or indirect losses of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

Lawyer Daniel Boyce also saw this clearly, so he tried to persuade Suri to solve the problem in another way.

The outside world knows it.

The conflict between Suri and the media oligarchs began after he founded Netflix Entertainment.

Yesterday evening, at the Emmy Awards, which was sponsored and broadcast by CBS, one of the judges even spoke out publicly, saying that it was a huge mistake to award the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor to "The Exes" and hinted that Suri and Netflix Entertainment , will not receive any honors at the Emmy Awards.

It was like suffering from a split-personality psychosis. After all, they were the ones who begged Suri to attend the Emmy Awards, and they were the ones who said he was not qualified to win the award.

It can be seen from this.

Within some media giants, there are still people who want to continue to suppress Suri and his business, which is why they behave so "schizophrenic".

No matter what, Suri has no plans to attend this and future Emmy Awards.

According to the information he received, most of the lawyers suing TikTok this time are from the same law firm and are inextricably linked to the media giant Viacom Group.

Suri is no longer a child and is not so impulsive.

At this moment, he is thinking about the allusion of "two peaches kill three people" and wondering whether we should try to disrupt the situation where several media giants have joined forces to target him from the inside... (End of this chapter)