Mumbai Man Files Cheating Case Against Musk Accusing Theft of His Concept of ‘Special Ticks’

Mumbai: A man from Mumbai has filed a cheating complaint against Twitter and its owner, Elon Musk. He has accused them of stealing his concept of a new label or ‘tick’ for the accounts of prominent personalities, including heads of state.

This man named Rupesh Singh filed the complaint before a magistrate’s court in Andheri seeking action under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 120B (criminal conspiracy), and the Copyright Act. The petitioner urged the court to “deal with the accused in accordance with the law. The complaint, filed on March 1, also named former Twitter India head Manish Maheshwari.

Twitter assigns a blue tick to ordinary verified accounts. However, prominent personalities like Prime Minister Narendra Modi or US President Joe Biden are assigned a brown tick.

Singh claims that the idea of assigning different coloured-ticks to verified Twitter accounts was developed and created by him. According to him, this idea was shared by him with the accused on the microblogging site in May 2022.

The complaint claimed that the accused, in a very “pre-planned and afterthought manner”, did not reply to his concept but after a few months, the same idea of different-coloured ticks was implemented without giving him credit and remuneration, he alleged.