Strava Just Sued Garmin: Demands Garmin Stop Selling Devices

Strava has sued Garmin, an act that I very much did not have on my bingo card for 2025. In doing so, they are demanding that Garmin cease selling effectively all of their fitness/outdoor watches, as well as cycling computers. Additionally, they’re asking for a bunch of feature removals on Garmin Connect.

Strava is claiming that Garmin is infringing on two patents, one around segments, and the other around heatmaps. Strava is further claiming that Garmin broke a Master Cooperation Agreement between the two companies from 2015, in order to develop their Garmin Segments functionality.

Which, about now, you’re probably thinking: Wait, Garmin has its own Segments?

Yes, they do. Garmin rolled them out waaaaay back in early 2014 on select Garmin Connect and select devices (the Edge 1000 was first), before Garmin and Strava rolled out Strava Live Segments in 2015 on more devices. And yes, we’re talking about something from 11 years ago that Strava is now really upset about. The same Garmin feature that literally nobody talks about.

In any case, the second patent that Strava is claiming Garmin has violated is one related to heat map display and generation. This patent (well, a collection of patents) was initially filed in 2014 (and awarded in 2016), though additional ones were filed over the following years, and awarded in most cases about a year later.

As a result of these, Strava is claiming that “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.”

Of course, this will raise many questions, both pertaining to the case itself, as well as connections between the two companies. So, let’s dive into the patents first, what this means for users, and why Strava has decided to sue what has unquestionably been their closest, biggest, and best partner over the last decade.

The Heatmaps Patent:

We’ll start here, because this is honestly the most clear-cut of the two (well, I’d argue both are clear-cut, but this is the one Strava is going to quickly lose).

The case essentially has two chief complaints, one focused on the Strava Segments piece, and the other focused on heatmaps and popularity routing. This second piece has one primary patent that Strava is saying Garmin violated (patent 9297651), with an ancillary patent 9778053. Both of these cover what Strava titles “Generating user preference activity maps”. In a nutshell, this means generating a map that shows where other users work out, based on other users’ ride/run/etc data. Here’s the exact wording, for funsies:

“Generating user preference activity maps is disclosed, including: collecting a plurality of user activities recorded by a plurality of GPS recording devices; determining a user preference map based at least in part on analyzing the plurality of user activities to aggregate user activity data associated with a base map; and determining one or more suggested routes between a user input first endpoint and a user input second endpoint based at least in part on the user preference map.”

The ’651 patent (the main one) was applied for on December 15th, 2014, and then issued in 2016. That first date will be super important in a second. The secondary patent was applied for in 2016, and issued in 2017.

In the filings/case, Strava says that Garmin has violated this patent by not only copying it, but putting it in devices, like their watches and bike computers.

“87. Defendants have directly infringed and continue to directly infringe one or more

claims of the ’651 Patent, including at least Claims 1, 2, 8, 9, 11, 18, and 23 (the “Asserted ’651

Claims”), by making, using, offering to sell, selling, and importing products and services that

practice the patented technology in the United States, without license or authority, including

Garmin Connect and Garmin devices—such as Edge cycling computers and Forerunner, Fenix,

and Epix watches—that implement Trendline/Popularity routing, heatmaps, Courses, and related

features (the “’651 Accused Instrumentalities”).”

And, this is all true. All of this exists today, and has for…well…a decade. And thus, in late June 2025, culminating this past July 25th, 2025, Strava said they formally notified Garmin of this issue (again, these dates are important, for different reasons, in a moment):

“94.  Defendants’ infringement has been and continues to be willful. Despite their

knowledge of the ’651 Patent and their infringement since at least July 25, 2025, Defendants have

intentionally or recklessly continued their infringing acts, making this an exceptional case and

warranting enhanced damages and reasonable attorneys’ fees under 35 U.S.C. §§ 284–285.”

Except, here’s the really fun part that revisionist history (a popular thing these days), tends to forget: Garmin actually had heatmaps first. And popularity routing first. In fact, they had it more than a year and a half before Strava filed their patent for it.

Garmin first started putting heatmaps in Garmin Connect back in early 2013. You can see images here from Garmin’s announcement. These were initially in US cities, before being expanded outwards. Heck, the New York Times even had a heat map site from June 2013 (it still works!!!). The Garmin site even had layers, too, for the heat map:

Similarly, in June 2013, I wrote about a 3rd party site that looked at the underlying Strava activity data to generate heatmaps and routes (I also found references back to October 2012 there, too). That 3rd party developer was not Strava, but simply using the then widely available underlying Strava activity data to create heat maps (since Strava heatmaps didn’t exist then). Here’s the high-level view:

A further look at the street view on RaceShape. Again, these screenshots are from June 2013 (18 months before Strava ever filed its initial patent in 2014).

But likewise, there are plenty of other examples at the time. Heatmaps and the generation of routes across them were simply were not a Strava invention, nor were they new. And this ignores the industry heavyweights at the time of MapMyRide, MapMyRun, etc…

Strava’s first heatmaps wouldn’t actually come until September 2013, when they then launched Personal Heatmaps, showing your own heatmaps for your own activities.

Point being, by the time Strava got around to implementing it, let alone filing a patent for it, heat maps was old news. The fact that they got a patent for it (and looking at the specifics of the patent, there’s nothing special there) is a testament to how messy software patents have been over the years. And hardware, too, for that matter. When the US Patent and Trademark Office grants a patent, it does so based on the application presented to it, combined with an examiner trying to find examples of prior art that would invalidate it. Or, the concept of an idea being so obvious that it can’t be patented. In this case, the prior art is frankly quite broad, and it’s surprising they got the patent at all.

Garmin’s lawyers will easily argue this patent shouldn’t have been granted and get it invalidated. That’s the exact same thing we saw when Wahoo tried to sue Zwift a few years ago, and the judge had one look at Wahoo’s patents and basically said ‘Dude, these probably never should have been granted’. Wahoo quickly dropped the case after that initial review, before the patents actually got nullified.

There’s no way this patent should ever have been granted. But we’ll circle back to why Strava is upset about this specific item, a decade later, in a second.

The Strava Segments Patent:

Next, there’s the Strava Segments patent. This is frankly the most bizarre of the ones out there. Mainly because, like the first one, Garmin and Strava have been doing this together for a decade. The two companies have worked incredibly closely, and Garmin has been Strava’s closest and best partner for a decade. While Garmin had often considered acquiring Strava back then, they determined it didn’t serve a purpose. Garmin got everything they wanted out of the relationship (including priority handling), without the cost/hassle of an acquisition. After all, and especially back then, Garmin users made up the majority of paying Strava subscribers. Therefore, it was in Strava’s best interest to keep Garmin and their users happy.

In any case, this patent basically covers the concept of a Strava Segment. The 9116922 patent was initially filed on March 31st, 2011, and granted years later on August 25th, 2015. Here’s the official patent definition of a segment, for funsies:

“Defining and matching segments is disclosed. In some embodiments, defining and matching segments includes receiving a user defined segment via a user interface input; and determining a matching effort (e.g., which can include a set of Geographic Positioning System (GPS) data) to the segment using a processor. In some embodiments, the data associated with the effort includes one or more of the following: heart rate, speed, time, and power. In some embodiments, defining and matching segments further includes storing data associated with the matching effort with the segment. In some embodiments, the user defined segment is based at least in part in uploaded GPS data. In some embodiments, the user defined segment is based at least in part on selected points on a map application.”

Now, what’s notable here is that Strava existed (with users creating segments) from 2009, and thus, it’s a bit strange that Strava had a two-year gap here before they got around to filing a patent on it. This is well beyond the typical 1-year grace period that the US PTO would allow for delays in filing a patent after public disclosure.

Nonetheless, Strava says that in 2014, Garmin copied Strava Segments and put it into their platform. I don’t think there’s any disagreement there, to be honest. Nor can I think of examples of a Segment-like functionality that existed prior to Strava. Of course, the concept of racing up a mountain along a given route for a time split, definitely existed prior to Strava (example, the KOM jersey in the Tour de France). But patents aren’t all about ideas, they are about technical implementation. In this case that includes things like gates to enter the segment, how those GPS points are treated, etc…

So, playing history for a brief second here. Garmin introduced Garmin Segments on Garmin Connect alongside the Edge 1000 in June 2014. They then expanded that to other Garmin devices over the remainder of the year. This included leaderboard functionality and such on Garmin Connect. Here’s a screenshot from 2014 of Garmin Connect’s web interface for that:

And then the same on the Edge 1000, using a Garmin Segment back in June 2014:

But ultimately, nobody really cared. Everyone wanted Strava Segments.

Strava notes this in their filing, saying:

“On information and belief, Garmin has long sought to leverage its hardware footprint to build its own social and competitive fitness experiences, but those efforts have failed to match Strava’s adoption, engagement, or network effects. Given the low popularity of Garmin’s internally-built features, Garmin sought to collaborate with Strava to directly integrate Strava’s segments into Garmin’s devices.”

That’s all true. So, on April 8th, 2015, they signed an agreement to implement Strava Live Segments on devices instead:

“To provide Garmin users with segment features that met Strava’s quality bar, the parties cooperated and entered into the MCA on April 8, 2015. The MCA—signed by Garmin, Ltd. and Strava—permitted Garmin to use defined “Strava Segments” solely to implement the user experience set forth in Exhibit A to that agreement.”

Though this almost certainly was in the works before that, given it would be less than 90 days later that Garmin rolled out Strava Live Segments on devices, something definitely not possible in Garmin’s software development timeline history.

As noted, this went live on Garmin devices on July 7th, 2015, here on the Garmin Edge 520 on launch day:

That was part of a ‘Master Cooperation Agreement’ the two companies signed. Interestingly, the lawsuit notes a specific provision of the agreement that requires that Garmin doesn’t display Strava Live Segments concurrently with Garmin Segments at the same time. Frankly, that’s probably for the best, otherwise things would be a hot mess. Nonetheless, this would become the basis of the Strava Live Segment feature rollout on numerous other manufacturer devices, such as Wahoo bike computers and many more. All of which required a premium Strava subscription to work.

In any event, the MCA also outlines a bunch of other things, with the lawsuit saying:

“The MCA includes strict restrictions and safeguards: Garmin receives a limited, revocable, non‑sublicensable license; may not adapt, reverse engineer, use, copy, modify, or distribute Strava Segments except as expressly licensed; and must comply with confidentiality and use‑of‑materials limits. The MCA also contains remedies and a carve‑out from limitations for breaches of these restrictions, along with fee‑shifting in specified circumstances. Strava performed under the MCA, including by delivering Strava Segments and integration materials, providing updates, and supporting Garmin’s implementation of the agreed user experience.”

Now, keep in mind, this is mostly just legal talk about legal things. However, the next paragraph is more interesting:

“Despite the MCA’s clear limits, Garmin expanded well beyond that agreement’s scope. Garmin built, branded, and widely deployed Garmin‑branded segments outside the Strava‑built experience and to non‑Strava users; enabled segment competition and leaderboards across Garmin Connect (web and mobile) and on devices; and surfaced segment results independent of the Exhibit A constraints.”

Here, Strava is saying that Garmin was supposed to stop expanding Garmin Segments, and use Strava Segments instead. Again, casual reminder, this happened a decade ago, and now Strava has decided they’re upset about it. Strava seems to be implying the MCA limits Garmin’s ability to roll out their existing Garmin Segment feature to other devices.

Sadly, at this time the MCA hasn’t been uploaded to the case docket, though, perhaps Garmin’s lawyers will do so in their response. So we can’t see what it actually says. But I’d be reasonably surprised if Garmin agreed to killing their Garmin Segments feature. Garmin knew it wasn’t popular, but also saw it as an alternative for those that didn’t have a paid Strava Subscription, even if they weren’t “competing” in the Strava ecosystem.

Either way, I don’t think anyone would argue Garmin Segments has been meaningfully successful since then. Nor has anything really changed since 2015. Garmin offers Segment capability on all their devices, regardless of whether it’s Strava Segments or Garmin Segments. And Strava hasn’t cared for…checks notes again…a decade.

Further, I went back to Strava to clarify if they had a statement about this, and they said:

“Garmin received limited permission from Strava to implement Strava Segments on their devices; however, they leveraged this access to carefully study those features, painstakingly copy them, and then release them as Garmin features. Garmin rejected Strava’s repeated attempts to address the infringement informally, forcing Strava to take a stand on the matter and file suit to protect its patented inventions.”

I then replied, asking why after 10 years, they would file suit, and they replied:

“While we can’t provide additional comment on the suit at this time, we encourage you to read the complaint, which provides a full background of Garmin’s actions and infringement.

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.”

I’m legit impressed Strava wrote “increasingly aggressive to its partners”. Like, after last year? That takes balls of steel.

Why is Strava Actually Suing?

Ahh yes, and this gets to the heart of the matter. First off, let’s see what Strava says in their filings:

“Strava provided written notice of infringement and breach at least by June 30, 2025, and again in July 2025, yet Garmin has continued its conduct, causing ongoing harm to Strava. Additionally, Garmin was on notice, as a result of its collaboration with Strava and the 2015 MCA, that at least Strava’s segment technology was protected by Strava’s intellectual property rights. Nevertheless, Garmin continued to use Strava’s technology in ways that Strava has never authorized or licensed.”

So, starting in June 2025, Strava officially notified Garmin that they were upset about the Strava Segments, and then again on July 25th, 2025. But why those dates?

Ahh, see, this gets to turbulence behind the scenes. We have to rewind the Strava API fiasco of Fall 2024. Yes, that one. The one that required API partner (and loose competitor) TrailForks to delete some 60 million activities from their platform.

While Strava held the rest of the industry somewhat hostage, Garmin was mostly excluded from that wrath. Again, Garmin is the heavyweight here and makes up the majority of paid Strava user data sources. However, that doesn’t mean Garmin was happy about it. In fact, they were quite upset about a few key things.

First, they weren’t at all happy about the AI pieces. Specifically, they weren’t happy about Strava using Garmin user data for AI training (data from Garmin users that uploaded to Strava), without any real control over that from a user perspective. All while Strava was basically prohibiting their downstream API partners from doing any AI training. Garmin saw this as a bit of a wonky double-standard.

Further, Strava was starting to require that all 3rd party apps more clearly label the data as coming from Strava, when it showed on 3rd party websites via the Strava API. Again, Garmin saw this as a wonky double-standard, because Strava didn’t do this for data coming from Garmin Connect via the API.

This was called ‘attribution’, and over the course of the spring, Garmin started working on a new Garmin Connect API policy around attribution. They presented this to bigger partners during that timeframe for feedback, and ultimately announced it in July 2025 under ‘API Brand Guidelines’.

Here are some examples from that document:

This isn’t really any different than what you’d see on Google Maps or other platforms, where the underlying data source is shown.

Garmin noted at the time that developers basically had to have this done by the end of 2025, but that they were pretty flexible on making that happen or assisting on timelines as necessary (a pretty big departure from the Strava mandate of “you have 30 days during the holidays” of 2024 fiasco). Either way, Strava was displeased about this, and had pushed back the most about it. For other developers, it was almost entirely a ‘shrug, sure’ type thing.

So then, why were heat maps and route creation pulled into it? Well, I suspect that Garmin’s May 2025 announcement of their Trails+ feature might play into that. That’s part of Garmin’s paid Garmin Connect+, and it uses various filtering operations to find routes near you.

Of course, this feature has literally nothing to do with the patent, but that’s neither here nor there.

Instead, Strava sees this as Garmin starting to encroach on their subscription-based turf, and thus cutting into Strava revenues.

To that end, Strava goes on to say:

“Defendants’ infringement has been and continues to be willful. Despite their knowledge of the ’053 Patent and their infringement since at least July 25, 2025, Defendants have intentionally or recklessly continued their infringing acts, making this an exceptional case and warranting enhanced damages and reasonable attorneys’ fees under 35 U.S.C. §§ 284–285.”

And then from here, they’re asking the court to prohibit Garmin from selling any devices with Segment or heat map features (that’s basically all fitness devices):

“Strava is therefore entitled to a permanent injunction prohibiting Defendants from making, using, offering to sell, selling, or importing the accused implementations (and any colorable variations) of the patented technology.”

“Monetary relief alone is inadequate. Garmin’s continued infringement of the ’922 Patent causes irreparable harm to Strava, including loss of network effects, erosion of platform differentiation and goodwill, and brand loyalty that cannot be fully measured or compensated in money. There is a causal nexus between the accused segment-identification, matching, and ranking and consumer demand for Garmin’s devices and services. Strava is therefore entitled to a permanent injunction prohibiting Garmin from making, using, offering to sell, selling, or importing the accused implementations (and any colorable variations) of the patented technology, and Strava has no adequate remedy at law; the balance of hardships and the public interest favor injunctive relief.”

Got all that? Good.

What Happens Next?

Obviously, Strava is asking the court (and thereby Garmin) to stop anything to do with segments or heatmaps, and to take all device sales off the market.

So, my first question to both Strava and Garmin was “What does this mean to users”? Will users’ connections break, their features break, sync of activities, routes, and so on? Garmin hasn’t replied back (it’s been 18 hours), though Strava surprisingly did. They said that:

“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.”

So it’s Strava’s hope that Garmin won’t retaliate. That’s probably a fair bet, since Garmin rarely likes to rock the boat in these types of scenarios. Instead, they tend to just win (virtually every time) in court, quietly, out of public view.

Except that might not be what Strava wants. Since their new CEO was appointed a year ago, they’ve gone on the offensive when it comes to industry partners. While I think he’s done some good user-facing feature things, there’s also been a lot of not-so-awesome policy changes. And of course, looming over all of that is the upcoming Strava IPO. Perhaps this is to drum up interest there.

I can’t help but sit here and wonder how poking the bear accomplishes that. Sure, Strava got away with roiling their API partners a year ago, but this time, they’re trying to attack their most important partner, Garmin. And do so over something pretty trivial. I note ‘most important partner’, because while one might see Apple as the most important partner for Strava, the two companies have never been particularly close by Strava standards. Strava has made advances over the last year or so to change that, and perhaps they think that by suing Garmin it’ll somehow earn them credits at the Apple Store. Who knows.

But what I can tell you is that if I were someone on Wall Street looking at this situation, I’d be doing a solid double-take of Strava’s leadership right now. You’ve just poked a bear that virtually never loses patent disputes, and done so by picking a patent that’s likely to get nullified, while concurrently being upset about something that happened 10 years ago. All while running the risk of Garmin simply saying “No problem, let’s turn off the API from Garmin to Strava”. Instantly, you’re hemorrhaging paid Strava users. For what reason? Just because you don’t want to put tiny source/attribution text on a display page somewhere?

And that’s before we remember that Strava appears to only hold 26 patents. Garmin? Likely thousands. It’s almost guaranteed that Strava has run afoul of some existing patent Garmin holds, that Garmin could countersue for. Over the last 12-14 years, Garmin has largely taken a “don’t sue anyone” approach to its patents. But that could change here.

This just seems like an incredibly bizarre move that’s almost certain to backfire.

Either way, I’m sure this lawsuit will provide us with all sorts of good document fodder for the next few months (or years), so at least we get that.

With that, thanks for reading!

FOUND THIS POST USEFUL? SUPPORT THE SITE!

Hopefully, you found this post useful. The website is really a labor of love, so please consider becoming a DC RAINMAKER Supporter. This gets you an ad-free experience, and access to our (mostly) bi-monthly behind-the-scenes video series of “Shed Talkin’”.

Support DCRainMaker - Shop on Amazon

Otherwise, perhaps consider using the below link if shopping on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot. It could simply be buying toilet paper, or this pizza oven we use and love.