Cyber wars: Wiz denies Orca’s patent claims, strikes back with counterclaims
Cyber wars: Wiz denies Orca’s patent claims, strikes back with counterclaims
Patent dispute intensifies as Wiz rejects claims that it has infringed on any of Orca's patents, offering a counter-narrative highlighting its own technological advancements and market success
In an escalating legal battle between two of Israel’s most prominent cybersecurity firms, Wiz has firmly denied allegations of patent infringement brought by Orca Security. In a court filing submitted this week, Wiz rejects claims that it has infringed on any of Orca's patents, offering a counter-narrative highlighting its own technological advancements and market success.
Wiz, a cloud security company established by seasoned cybersecurity entrepreneurs, has rapidly ascended since its inception in 2020. With a significant client base that includes numerous Fortune 100 companies, Wiz underscores its industry impact and high valuation. The filing depicts Wiz as a trailblazer in the cybersecurity sector, contrasting its innovative strides with Orca’s purported reliance on appropriated ideas.
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Wiz's Assaf Rappaport and Orca's Avi Shua.
(Photos: Orca Security and Nathaniel Tobias)
The document paints Orca as a company that has allegedly mishandled confidential information and engaged in systematic copying of Wiz’s innovations, rather than fostering its own. In addition to refuting Orca’s allegations, Wiz has lodged its own counterclaims, accusing Orca of infringing on specific technologies and methodologies integral to Wiz's operations.
Wiz claims in the lawsuit that Orca waived its parent patent, which is the basis for the other patents discussed in the lawsuit, and presents seven instances in which features and products launched by Wiz were subsequently copied by Orca.
Wiz is seeking the dismissal of Orca's lawsuit, reimbursement for legal expenses, and other judicial remedies. The company has also called for a jury trial, signaling its confidence in both defending against Orca’s claims and pursuing its own counterclaims vigorously.
Last month, the Delaware court rejected Wiz's request to dismiss Orca’s lawsuit outright. Orca filed the lawsuit in July last year, alleging that Wiz infringed on its patents by copying its technology.
The court has appointed expert external consultants, one for each company, to review each other's products and determine if Wiz indeed copied Orca's product. The findings will not be publicly disclosed, but the experts will report to the court. The trial is set to begin before a jury on December 8, 2025.
In its lawsuit, Orca claims it demonstrated that Wiz built its business by deliberately violating Orca's intellectual property. Orca alleges that it developed and marketed its product before Wiz, accusing Wiz of copying its patents, technology, marketing materials, and even working with the same lawyers who handled Orca’s patent registration.
According to Orca’s original lawsuit, "Wiz was birthed from the very beginning as a counterfeit copy of Orca’s ideas—Mr. Shua (Orca co-founder) had presented Orca’s Platform to Wiz’s founders at Microsoft in May 2019, and the so-called “insight” of which Wiz boasts was nothing more than the misappropriation of Mr. Shua’s ideas and Orca’s technology as presented to Wiz’s founders before they formed Wiz and sought to launch a copycat competitor to Orca. It was at this 2019 meeting that Mr. Shua explained how cloud security would forever be changed by his novel agentless cloud security platform as implemented in Orca’s cloud-native security platform. Within months, the Wiz founders left their lucrative careers at Microsoft to start Wiz, build a clone of Orca’s technology, and compete directly with Orca."
Orca has raised $640 million since its inception, with its latest funding round valuing the company at $1.8 billion in 2021. Wiz, meanwhile, recently raised $1 billion, led by the American venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, at a valuation of $12 billion.
Orca said in response: "The court rejected Wiz's request to outright dismiss the patent infringement claim by Orca. After the summary dismissal was denied, Wiz filed a counterclaim. Orca intends to show that the patents Wiz is suing for are also based on Orca's intellectual property and technology, which Orca invented long before Wiz's patent date."
