Twitter has sued Elon Musk for rejecting a $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform, Politico reported.

The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Chancery Court, will likely set the stage for a protracted legal battle as the company seeks to get Musk to complete the acquisition or, in the alternative, demand a $1 billion payment from him.

“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away,” the complaint said.

The complaint also accused Musk of “a long list of material contractual breaches . . . that have cast a pall over Twitter and its business”, including putting the deal on hold “pending satisfaction of imaginary conditions”, breaching financing obligations and misusing confidential information.

The lawsuit against Twitter was filed after Musk agreed to buy the company in April. The status of the deal hung in the air for weeks as Tesla's CEO's public comments about spam accounts raised questions about his next moves.

His lawyer said that the company "substantially violated" many provisions of the original agreement, accusing Twitter of withholding data that Musk had requested to analyze the number of bots and spam accounts on the platform.