Strava is suing Garmin for patent infringement. Here’s what we all know

Fitness app Strava and sports activities watchmaker Garmin often go hand-in-hand, however the two health tech leaders at the moment are in competitors in a US lawsuit.

Strava is suing Garmin, claiming it copied Strava’s patented concepts and that Garmin is working exterior of a long-standing settlement.

Here’s what we all know concerning the lawsuit.

What is Strava?

Strava is a mixed health tracker and social media platform based within the US.

Users can observe actions akin to working, biking or swimming based mostly on time, distance and routes, together with different knowledge akin to coronary heart charge and energy.

Workouts will be shared on a public or personal feed, the place different customers can remark or give “kudos” on posts.

Workouts are recorded both straight into the cellphone app or by a third-party gadget akin to a wise watch.

As of August 2025, Strava had greater than 150 million customers worldwide.

What is Garmin?

Garmin is a know-how firm that specialises in GPS-enabled merchandise, additionally based within the US.

Its sensible watches are fashionable amongst athletes because of the vary of metrics measured (akin to tempo, elevation, cadence, stride size, coronary heart charge) and their accuracy in GPS monitoring.

Garmin’s personal platform, Garmin Connect, permits customers to sync with Strava so exercises are robotically recorded onto Strava.

Why is Strava suing Garmin?

Strava is claiming Garmin has infringed on two of its patents: one concerning segments and the opposite warmth maps.

Segments confer with elements of routes that customers can evaluate their occasions with different customers.

For instance, a runner may evaluate a 1km section on their 5km run with how briskly different runners ran that individual a part of the route.

According to the lawsuit, filed within the District Court of Colorado, Garmin approached Strava to collaborate on an official integration of Strava’s segments on Garmin’s gadgets, resulting in a Master Cooperation Agreement (MCA) between the businesses in 2015.

The settlement banned Garmin from adapting, reverse engineering, copying, or distributing the Strava segments with out categorical settlement.

Strava alleges Garmin breached that settlement by increasing its “Garmin segments” function and that the Garmin Segments infringe on their patent.

According to the lawsuit, Garmin has additionally been accused of copying Strava’s warmth maps function.

Strava makes use of color gradients to point out customers how fashionable routes are for various sports activities at completely different occasions of day and yr.

Similarly to the segments, an MCA is in place for the warmth maps function.

Strava claims Garmin has copied this function with its personal warmth maps and subsequently infringed Strava’s patent and breached the MCA.

What does Strava need from Garmin?

Strava is attempting to cease Garmin from promoting merchandise that use these options by an injunction.

That injunction would come with Garmin’s Connect platform together with its hottest health monitoring gadgets.

Strava claims the lawsuit is off the again of one other concern — Garmin is requiring its emblem to be included on posts shared to Strava underneath new API (Application Programming Interface) tips.

Strava’s chief product officer Matt Salazar stated on a put up on Reddit that they had been actively attempting to cease this requirement.

“We have until November 1st to comply, and if not, Garmin has threatened to cut off access to their API, stopping all Garmin activities from being uploaded to Strava,” Mr Salazar stated.

He stated he thought of the brand new API necessities to be “blatant advertising”.

“If you recorded an activity on your watch, we think that is your data,” he stated.

“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.”

What does this imply for Strava and Garmin customers?

A whole lot of customers on-line are asking the identical query — however at this early stage, it is unclear.

So far each the app and Garmin gadgets stay unaffected.

A Strava spokesperson instructed DC Rainmaker: “Our lawsuit is between two companies; we do 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.”

But Garmin is but to answer that declare or the lawsuit. 

The ABC has contacted Garmin for remark.