Hebei Welcome won the case in 2016, but the plaintiff refused to accept the judgment and applied to the US Supreme Court for a retrial.

The plaintiffs will "strongly oppose" the government's motion, according to the plaintiff's lead lawyer.

"As for the current civil case, Mo explained: "There are two times that Liu has to appear — he has to appear at the plaintiff's deposition, and then the second time he has to appear is when the trial is proceeding in court.

"Mo, who was a New York deputy police commissioner in the 1980s, said if Liu fails to appear in court, the judge might automatically rule in favor of the plaintiff in the lawsuit, but Liu will not be arrested if he fails to appear in court because it's a civil case.

"As the one that published the report first, we should be the owner of the article's copyright," the plaintiff said, asking Baidu for a public apology in addition to the compensation.

In one of the lawsuits, the plaintiff Kalman Isaacs said Musk's tweets were false and misleading, and together with Tesla's failure to correct them amounted to a "nuclear attack" designed to "completely decimate" short-sellers.

He suggested courts replace the names of litigants with the "plaintiff" and "defendant" when uploading rulings online, with stronger supervision of disclosed information, "so that personal data can be truly safeguarded on the way to guaranteeing judicial transparency".