Following yesterday’s news that it had filed a lawsuit against Garmin, Strava has sought to explain the reasons behind the action.
In a post on Reddit, Strava’s chief product officer, Matt Salazar, said the primary reason behind its litigation was a set of “new developer guidelines for all of its API partners”, which Strava took issue with.
Curiously, this appears to be unrelated to the claims in Strava’s lawsuit that Garmin has infringed on two of its patents.
According to Salazar, Garmin's new guidelines were announced on 1 July 2025 and would require Strava, and other platforms using Garmin’s API, to integrate a Garmin logo “on every single activity post, screen, graph, image, sharing card, etc”.
For context, an API or ‘Application Programming Interface’ is a tool that enables different pieces of software to connect with one another and share features, data or functions. In the case of Garmin and Strava, Garmin’s API is what enables activity data to be automatically shared to Strava after it’s uploaded to Garmin’s Connect app.
Entities using Garmin’s API have, Salazar claims, until 1 November 2025 to comply with the updated guidelines, or else “Garmin has threatened to cut off access to their API, stopping all Garmin activities from being uploaded to Strava”.
Salazar says Strava does not wish to comply with the new guidelines because it feels that including Garmin’s logo would amount to “blatant advertising” that would “actively degrade your user experience on Strava (and the other 150M+ athletes)”.
Strava, Salazar says, “already provides attribution for every data partner”, but sees the inclusion of logos as a step too far: “they told us they care more about their marketing than your user experience”.
Salazar also suggests this is unfair because “Garmin doesn’t even provide data attribution for third-party devices (such as heart-rate monitors or power meters) on the Garmin Connect app”.
Continuing on this theme, Salazar says: “If you recorded an activity on your watch, we think that is your data.
“We believe you should be able to freely transfer or upload that data without requiring logos to be displayed alongside it or have that data be used as an advertisement to sell more watches.”
As a result, Salazar says Strava “could not justify to our users complying with the new [Garmin API] guidelines”.
He claims Strava has “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”.
It’s notable, though, that Garmin’s current API guidelines suggest that although “a Garmin [device model] attribution” is mandatory, the inclusion of its logo is not.
Platforms should “list the Garmin attribution in all expanded views or subscreens. For multi-entry displays, you can apply the attribution globally – such as in a header – or per entry. Screenshots, printouts and reports must retain visible Garmin attribution”.
It continues: “The attribution can include the Garmin tag logo followed by the device model or simply be listed in appropriately sized text: 'Garmin [device model].'."
The guidelines then provide a number of illustrative examples with and without the Garmin logo included.
When contacted, Garmin told BikeRadar that it "doesn’t comment on pending litigation.".
BikeRadar has contacted Strava for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
