Strava sues Garmin over patents, seeks to block sales of fitness devices. Details here
Strava has sued Garmin, alleging patent violations on segments and heatmaps, and asked the court to stop Garmin from selling its fitness devices.
Strava has filed a lawsuit against Garmin, accusing the company of infringing on two patents and asking the court to block Garmin from selling its fitness devices, including watches and cycling computers, according to DC Rainmaker.
Strava says the patents in question cover segments and heatmaps, also called popularity routing.
According to the filing, Strava has “suffered damages, including lost revenue and business opportunities, erosion of competitive differentiation and network effects, harm to goodwill, and unjust gains to Garmin.”
Despite this, Strava said it “does not intend to take any actions that would disrupt the ability of Garmin users to sync their data with Strava and hope Garmin values our shared users in the same way.”
Lawsuit has two main parts
The lawsuit has two main parts. Strava claims Garmin violated a 2015 Master Cooperation Agreement between the two companies.
The first part of the case cites patent 9297651 and related patent 9778053, which cover technology for generating user activity maps, or heatmaps, showing where people exercise. Strava applied for this patent in December 2014, and it was issued in 2016. Strava argues Garmin copied it for its devices.
However, DC Rainmaker notes Garmin introduced heatmaps in its Garmin Connect platform as early as 2013, beginning with US cities.
The second part of the case involves patent 9116922, filed in March 2011, covering the idea of Strava Segments. Garmin introduced its own version of segments in 2014 with the Edge 1000 and later expanded it to other devices. Strava’s popularity led Garmin to sign an agreement on April 8, 2015, to use Strava Live Segments instead of expanding Garmin Segments.
Strava’s lawsuit follows its move to require third-party apps to label data as coming from Strava. But Garmin did not follow this rule for data flowing from Garmin Connect through its API. Garmin later issued a new Connect API policy in July 2025.
It has also been claimed that Garmin does not allow Strava to use Garmin user data for AI training, and that users have little control over this.
Strava spokesperson's statement
A Strava spokesperson told DC Rainmaker, “Garmin rejected Strava’s repeated attempts to address infringement informally, forcing Strava to take a stand on the matter and file suit to protect its patented inventions.
“Regarding timing, we reached out to Garmin repeatedly over a period of several months to resolve this amicably, and were rejected. Garmin has been increasingly aggressive to its partners lately (perhaps due to competitive pressure) and Strava is standing up for the hard work our teams have put into building unique features.”
