MAM
Cookie crumbles: Oreo maker sues Parle over design infringement
NEW DELHI: Mondelez-owned food manufacturer Intercontinental Great Brands, the maker of Oreo biscuits, has moved the Delhi high court against Parle Products, alleging that the design of one of its biscuit brands is similar to that of its popular offering.
Intercontinental has claimed that the design of Parle's Fabio biscuits is “deceptively similar” to that of Oreo. Both cookies do share similar visual characteristics – white cream sandwiched between two round, dark biscuits.
The court has fixed April 12 as the date for next hearing in the trademark infringement case. So far both Intercontinental and Parle have not issued a statement on the case.
Intercontinental Great Brands LLC is a unit of Mondelez International Inc. Mondelez had launched Oreo in India about a decade ago. It had gradually introduced more variants of the original Oreo cookie, including choco creme and strawberry flavours. On the other hand, Parle's Fabio biscuits entered the market in January 2020.
According to data shared by Mondelez, India is among its top-five markets by volume, and is now the fourth largest market for Oreo in the world. No surprise then that the company was quick to take legal recourse to fend off competition from a lookalike biscuit, spelling trouble for Parle. But that's the way the cookie crumbles.
This is the latest case of alleged infringement in the highly competitive biscuit market in India. There have been multiple cases of trademark infringement among various companies.
Just last year, Britannia Industries had filed an infringement case against Kishore Biyani-led Future Consumer, alleging that it had copied the packaging of several of its biscuit brands. Britannia said that Future had used 'Good Time' on one of its products, similar to Britannia's Good Day brand. In December, it filed a case against ITC for alleged infringement of its product packaging trademark.
Brands
Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
