{"id":233018,"date":"2025-10-22T17:43:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T17:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233018\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T17:43:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T17:43:08","slug":"strava-blinks-first-in-legal-duel-with-garmin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233018\/","title":{"rendered":"Strava blinks first in legal duel with Garmin"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the weirder legal battles in cycling<\/a> is over before it really began, it seems. After launching a massive legal challenge just weeks ago, Strava is retracting its suit against formerly-friendly partner, Garmin.<\/p>\n

Specifically, Strava\u2019s latest filing \u201cvoluntarily dismisses the above-captioned action, without prejudice,\u201d as reported by DC Rainmaker<\/a>, who also broke the initial story of the feuding besties.<\/p>\n

While the legal battle may have fizzled out before it got interesting, there\u2019s surely some lingering bad blood. Strava didn\u2019t just sue Garmin. Strava sued Garmin on very questionable grounds. Then its C-suite took to Reddit to attack Garmin in the court of public opinion (where it also failed spectacularly)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A peculiar patent battle<\/p>\n

If you missed this episode of legal comedy the first time around, the rough details are that Strava decided to sue Garmin for patent infringement. The two claims regarded segments and heat maps. The weird part was, as was immediately noted by many, these patents were more than 10 years old by the time Strava decided to seek legal recourse.<\/p>\n

Strava\u2019s demands were just as odd. Despite more than a decade of close partnership, which Strava clearly benefitted from, the social fitness tracking platform didn\u2019t just nip at Garmin\u2019s fingers. It attempted to take a big old chomp, demanding Garmin stop selling all fitness tracking devices and remove both features from Garmin Connect, Garmin\u2019s own, slightly less social fitness tracking platform. In doing so, Strava seems to have tried to bite off more than it could chew.<\/p>\n

Spanish rider banned for life from China after Strava post sparks outrage<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A failed PR battle<\/p>\n

When news of Strava\u2019s suit went public, the public reaction was a mix of confusion and frustration. Why was Strava doing this? And why was it threatening to make its users quite expensive fitness tracking useless?<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t quite the roaring adulation Strava was expecting for taking on the fitness tracking overlords, it seems. So Matt Salazar, the Chief Product Officer at Strava, went on Reddit to made sure everyone understand that Strava was doing this for us<\/a>, to defend our right to control our own data, not out of any self interest. And certainly not because Strava has hinted lately that it might seek to go public<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reddit was not buying this Robin Hood act, to put it mildly. Salazar was quickly called out on multiple fronts, only adding to the backlash against Strava\u2019s legal posturing.<\/p>\n

So, where does this leave Strava? And Garmin? And Strava and Garmin?<\/p>\n

Well, Strava seems to be complying with Garmin\u2019s latest demands for credit on Strava\u2019s platform, which was the not-so-secret motivation behind Strava\u2019s initial legal volley. Garmin\u2026 well, Garmin hasn\u2019t said much. It\u2019s either unbothered, or uninterested in turning this into a PR battle. As for Strava and Garmin\u2019s once close relationship? That\u2019s probably at least a little strained at this point. What did Strava get out of this whole fiasco? Who knows. With this all being settled out of court, maybe we\u2019ll never find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the weirder legal battles in cycling is over before it really began, it seems. After launching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,216,85,84054,140015],"class_list":["post-233018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-garmin","tag-sports","tag-strava","tag-what-just-happened"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}