Israeli cloud cybersecurity startup Orca Security Ltd. today filed a lawsuit against its Israeli rival Wiz Inc. claiming that Wiz has infringed its patents.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court, District of Delaware, claims that Wiz built its business on infrastructure that Orca had first developed and, in doing so, intentionally violated Orca’s intellectual property. The lawsuit demands that Wiz halt offering all products and services that infringe its IP and pay financial compensation for using Orca’s patents.

“Wiz built its business based on a simple business plan: to copy Orca,” the lawsuit claims. Orca goes on to claim that the copying includes Wiz copying Orca’s imagery, messaging and “even the coffee it uses at trade shows.”

Getting to the heart of where the copying allegedly took place, Orca claims that “Wiz recruited Ora’s former patent attorney to copy Orca’s intellectual property and even the figures from Orca’s patents. Wiz has embedded a number of revolutionary inventions developed and patented by Orca, passed those inventions off falsely as Wiz innovations and forced Orca to compete against its own technological breakthroughs in the marketplace.”

The suit then claims these actions are “illegal, unjust and in violation of United States patent laws.” The patent in question — U.S. Patent Nos. 11,663,031 and 11,663,032 — cover techniques for securing virtual cloud assets at rest and securing virtual machines by application use analysis.

Orca was founded in 2019 by former Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. Chief Technologist Avi Shua and Gil Geron, former director for cybersecurity gateway and cloud products. The company offers a technology called SideScanning designed to deliver comprehensive and seamless visibility into the security posture of an organization’s complete cloud footprint. Orca is venture capital-backed, having last raised $550 million on a $1.8 billion valuation in October 2021.

Wiz is also venture capital-backed, having last raised $300 million on a $10 billion valuation in February. Founded in 2020, Wiz sells a software platform that helps companies detect vulnerabilities and malicious activity in their cloud environments.

Orca has not publicly commented on the lawsuit. Wiz, however, told Globes that “we were surprised to discover Orca’s groundless claims through the media. Instead of coping with competition and winning the trust of customers, it seems that the company is taking the desperate step of a lawsuit.”

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