Strava has dropped its lawsuit against Garmin exactly three weeks after filing the patent-infringement case.
This appears to bring an end to the brief dispute, although what it means for the ongoing relationship between the two tech companies and their apps remains to be seen.
A single-line filing from Strava yesterday (Tuesday 21 October) stated: “Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), Plaintiff Strava, Inc., by and through its undersigned counsel, voluntarily dismisses the above-captioned action, without prejudice.“
Strava’s case, filed on 30 September in the US District Court for the District of Colorado, related to two of its key features – Segments and heatmaps – and saw it demand that Garmin stop selling many of its devices.
Strava claimed Garmin had infringed on its patents. Its Segments patent was filed in 2011 and granted in 2015, while the heatmaps patent was filed in 2014 and granted in 2016.
As a result of the alleged patent infringements, Strava claimed it had "suffered damages, including lost revenue and business opportunities, erosion of competitive differentiation and network effects, harm to goodwill, and unjust gains to Garmin”.
Strava’s lawsuit sought a permanent injunction to stop Garmin selling devices that include Segments or heatmap functionality, which would have covered most of Garmin’s smartwatches and Edge bike computers.
In a subsequent Reddit post, Strava’s chief product officer, Matt Salazar, claimed the reason behind its litigation was a set of “new developer guidelines for all of its API partners” from Garmin, which appeared to contradict its court filing.
Salazar said Strava had “tried to resolve this situation with Garmin over the course of the past five months, including proposing additional attribution across the platform in a less intrusive way, but to no avail”.
Garmin did not respond publicly to the filing or Salazar’s post.
BikeRadar asked Strava why it dropped its lawsuit against Garmin, and whether any resolutions had been found. Strava said: "We're glad to put this behind us, but can't comment further at this time."
Suunto has also filed a suit against Garmin, accusing it of infringing five patents related to measuring a user’s respiratory rate, antenna design, watch casing and tracking golf shots.
