Strava sues Garmin and asks to stop the sale of their devices

The battle between two giants in the sports sector has erupted in the courts. Strava has filed a lawsuit against Garmin in the District Court of Colorado, accusing the American manufacturer of infringing on several of its key patents: the popular Segments and heatmaps.

Strava sues Garmin for segment and heatmap patents and requests to stop the sale of their devices

According to court documents collected by DC Rainmaker, the sports social network claims that Garmin has violated at least three patents registered between 2011 and 2016. The first refers to Segments, those route sections where users compete virtually based on times and rankings. Strava claims that, despite both companies signing a Master Cooperation Agreement (MCA) in 2015 for Garmin to implement Strava Live Segments on their devices, the GPS device brand continued to develop its own system in parallel, breaching the agreement.

The second front opened corresponds to the heatmap function, interactive maps that show the routes most frequented by the community. Strava accuses Garmin of copying this functionality on their platforms, something they consider a direct detriment to their business. However, DC Rainmaker points out that Garmin had already introduced versions of popularity maps in 2013, even before Strava formally requested those patents. This could be key in Garmin's defense, as they will likely argue that Strava's patents should never have been granted.

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Strava claims to have suffered "economic losses, frustrated business opportunities, erosion of their competitive advantage, reputational damage, and undue profits for Garmin". In addition, in June and July of this year, the company had already notified Garmin in writing of the alleged breaches, without reaching an extrajudicial agreement.

The lawsuit requests a permanent court order requiring Garmin to cease the sale of all devices that include these functions, which would affect almost all of their sports watches and Edge cycle computers. Despite the strong request, Strava claims they do not intend to interrupt data synchronization between Garmin Connect and their platform, and insists that they hope Garmin "values shared users in the same way that Strava does."

The conflict comes after months of tensions. Strava has recently made changes to its API that have made integration with third-party applications and services more difficult, something Garmin openly criticized, especially regarding the use of user data to train artificial intelligence models.

For now, Garmin has not made any public statements, while Strava maintains that they tried to resolve the issue amicably for months and that it was "Garmin's increasingly aggressive attitude towards their partners" that forced them to take legal action.