Strava has filed a lawsuit against Garmin over two key features, Segments and heatmaps, and demanded that Garmin stops selling many of its devices.
The lawsuit was filed on 30 September in the US District Court for the District of Colorado and Strava claims Garmin is infringing patents, as first reported by DC Rainmaker.
Strava’s Segment patent was filed in 2011 and granted in 2015. The patent effectively covers GPS segments with time-based performance comparisons. Garmin introduced its own Segments in 2014 on its Edge 1000 bike computer, and expanded the feature to its other devices over the remainder of the year.
Garmin then collaborated with Strava to bring Strava Live Segments to Garmin devices under a Master Cooperation Agreement (MCA).
As part of the MCA, Garmin agreed not to show Garmin and Strava Segments at the same time. Now, Strava claims in its lawsuit that Garmin expanded beyond the MCA agreement’s scope, studying the Strava implementation and using it as a blueprint to build a competing system.
The second part of the lawsuit relates to heatmap display. Strava cites two patents, which cover generating a map that shows where other users work out based on activity data. These patents were filed in 2014 and 2016.
But, as DC Rainmaker explains, Garmin had heatmap functionality in 2013. “Garmin’s lawyers will easily argue this patent shouldn’t have been granted and get it invalidated,” claims DC Rainmaker.
As a result of these patent infringements, Strava claims it "has 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 says it provided Garmin with written notice of infringement in June and July of this year, which followed disagreements between the two companies.
Last year, Strava introduced API changes that disrupted third-party apps, such as Garmin. Garmin was critical of how Strava handled data attribution and used Garmin data (from Garmin users who upload activities to Strava) for AI training.
Strava’s lawsuit asks for a permanent injunction to stop Garmin selling devices that include Segments or heatmap functionality, which would cover most of Garmin’s smartwatches and Edge bike computers.
Strava told DC Rainmaker that it does not intend to disrupt the ability of Garmin users to sync data with Strava and it hopes “Garmin values our shared users in the same way”.
