Strava has demanded that Garmin stops selling devices, including all fitness watches and cycling computers, as it claims Garmin is infringing on two patents.
As first reported by DC Rainmaker, Strava has filed a lawsuit against Garmin over the alleged infringement of two patents, one around segments and the other around heatmaps/popularity routing.
Strava claims that 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.”
However, Strava also stated that 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.” How that’s possible if Strava is somehow successful in stopping Garmin from selling its devices we don’t know, but that’s what the social fitness giant is saying.
There are two components to the lawsuit, and Strava claims that Garmin broke a Master Cooperation Agreement from 2015.
The first component of the case claims that Garmin has violated patent 9297651 and ancillary patent 9778053. This covers what Strava refers to as “generate user preference activity maps”, or heatmaps that show where users work out based on user data.
Strava heatmap (credit: road.cc)
The main patent was applied for on December 14th, 2014, and was issued in 2016. Strava claims that Garmin has violated this patent by copying it and putting it in its devices.
However, DC Rainmaker suggests that Garmin first started putting heatmaps in Garmin Connect in early 2013, starting with US cities.
The second component of the case covers patent 9116922, filed on 31 March 2011. This covers the concept of a Strava Segment.
Garmin launched its own segments, alongside the Edge 1000, in June 2014, which was expanded to other devices over the rest of the year. However, the popularity of Strava Segments led Garmin to sign an agreement on the 8th of April to implement Strava Live Segments on devices instead.
As part of this Master Cooperation Agreement, Garmin was supposed to stop expanding Garmin Segments and use Strava Segments instead.
Garmin Live Segments (credit: road.cc)
The rather ambitious lawsuit come after Strava started to require third party apps to clearly label data as coming from Strava.
However, Strava didn’t do this for data coming from Garmin Connect via the API, leading to Garmin announcing a new Garmin Connect API policy in July 2025.
It’s also been claimed that Garmin does not support Strava using Garmin user data for its AI training, and that there is little control over it from a user perspective.
When approached for comment by DC Rainmaker, a Strava spokesperson said, “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.”
road.cc has approached both Strava and Garmin for comment.