Strava has sued Garmin, alleging patent violations on segments and heatmaps, and requested the court docket to cease Garmin from promoting its health units.
Strava says the patents in query cowl segments and heatmaps, additionally known as reputation routing.(strava.com)
Strava says the patents in query cowl segments and heatmaps, additionally known as reputation routing.
According to the submitting, Strava has “suffered damages, together with misplaced income and enterprise alternatives, erosion of aggressive differentiation and community results, hurt to goodwill, and unjust positive aspects to Garmin.”
Despite this, Strava stated it “doesn’t intend to take any actions that might disrupt the flexibility of Garmin customers to sync their knowledge with Strava and hope Garmin values our shared customers in the identical means.”
Lawsuit has two predominant elements
The lawsuit has two predominant elements. Strava claims Garmin violated a 2015 Master Cooperation Agreement between the 2 corporations.
The first a part of the case cites patent 9297651 and associated patent 9778053, which cowl expertise for producing consumer exercise maps, or heatmaps, exhibiting the place folks train. Strava utilized for this patent in December 2014, and it was issued in 2016. Strava argues Garmin copied it for its units.
However, DC Rainmaker notes Garmin launched heatmaps in its Garmin Connect platform as early as 2013, starting with US cities.
The second a part of the case entails patent 9116922, filed in March 2011, masking the concept of Strava Segments. Garmin launched its personal model of segments in 2014 with the Edge 1000 and later expanded it to different units. Strava’s reputation led Garmin to signal an settlement on April 8, 2015, to make use of Strava Live Segments as a substitute of increasing Garmin Segments.
Strava’s lawsuit follows its transfer to require third-party apps to label knowledge as coming from Strava. But Garmin didn’t comply with this rule for knowledge flowing from Garmin Connect by way of its API. Garmin later issued a brand new Connect API coverage in July 2025.
It has additionally been claimed that Garmin doesn’t enable Strava to make use of Garmin consumer knowledge for AI coaching, and that customers have little management over this.
Strava spokesperson’s assertion
A Strava spokesperson informed DC Rainmaker, “Garmin rejected Strava’s repeated makes an attempt to handle infringement informally, forcing Strava to take a stand on the matter and file go well with to guard its patented innovations.
“Regarding timing, we reached out to Garmin repeatedly over a interval of a number of months to resolve this amicably, and have been rejected. Garmin has been more and more aggressive to its companions recently (maybe resulting from aggressive strain) and Strava is standing up for the onerous work our groups have put into constructing distinctive options.”
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