{"id":175868,"date":"2025-10-02T20:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T20:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/175868\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T20:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T20:07:07","slug":"strava-demands-that-garmin-stops-selling-devices-over-alleged-patent-infringement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/175868\/","title":{"rendered":"Strava demands that Garmin stops selling devices over alleged patent infringement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Strava has demanded that Garmin stops selling devices, including all fitness watches and cycling computers, as it claims Garmin is infringing on two patents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As first reported by DC Rainmaker,<\/a> Strava has filed a lawsuit<\/a> against Garmin\u00a0over the alleged infringement of two patents, one around segments\u00a0and the other around heatmaps\/popularity routing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Strava claims that it has \u201csuffered damages, including lost revenue and business opportunities, erosion of competitive differentiation and network effects, harm to goodwill, and unjust gains to Garmin.\u201d<\/p>\n

> Best\u00a0cycling computers<\/a><\/p>\n

However, Strava\u00a0also stated that it \u201cdoes 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.\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are two components to the lawsuit, and Strava claims that Garmin\u00a0broke a Master Cooperation Agreement from 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first component of the case claims that Garmin has violated patent 9297651\u00a0and ancillary patent 9778053. This covers what Strava refers to as \u201cgenerate user preference activity maps\u201d, or\u00a0heatmaps that show where users work out based on user data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"StravaStrava heatmap (credit: road.cc)<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, DC Rainmaker suggests that\u00a0Garmin first started putting heatmaps in Garmin Connect in early 2013, starting with US cities.<\/p>\n

The second component of the case covers patent 9116922, filed on 31 March 2011. This covers the concept of a Strava Segment.<\/p>\n

Garmin launched its own segments, alongside the Edge 1000, in June 2014, which was expanded to other devices over the rest of the year. \u00a0However, the popularity of Strava Segments led Garmin to sign an agreement on the 8th\u00a0of April to implement Strava Live Segments on devices instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of this Master Cooperation Agreement, Garmin was supposed to stop expanding Garmin Segments and use Strava Segments instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"GarminGarmin Live Segments (credit: road.cc)<\/p>\n

The rather\u00a0ambitious\u00a0lawsuit come after Strava started to require third\u00a0party apps to clearly label data as coming from Strava.<\/p>\n

However, Strava didn\u2019t do this for data coming from Garmin Connect via the API, leading to Garmin announcing a new Garmin Connect API policy\u00a0in July 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s also been claimed that Garmin does not support Strava using Garmin user data for its\u00a0AI training, and that there is\u00a0little control over it from a user perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When approached for comment by DC Rainmaker, a Strava spokesperson said, \u201cGarmin rejected Strava\u2019s repeated attempts to address infringement informally, forcing Strava to take a stand on the matter and file suit to protect its patented inventions.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegarding 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

road.cc has approached both Strava and Garmin for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Strava has demanded that Garmin stops selling devices, including all fitness watches and cycling computers, as it claims…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-175868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}