Strava has filed a lawsuit against longtime partner Garmin and is seeking a permanent injunction against the sale and provision of features that use Segments and heat maps, arguing that monetary compensation is insufficient.
Strava has filed a lawsuit against longtime partner Garmin and is seeking a permanent injunction against the sale and provision of features that use Segments and heat maps, arguing that monetary compensation is insufficient.
According to The Verge, the lawsuit was filed in the District Court of Colorado on September 30.
Strava’s statement says that Garmin, having received limited access to Strava Live Segments under the Master Cooperation Agreement (2015), «extended» its own Garmin segments beyond the permitted integration and deployed competing functions in Garmin Connect and on gadgets. Strava includes Edge cycling computers and the Forerunner, Fenix and Epix watch lines under potential ban. In addition to blocking sales, the company asks to stop providing services that implement the disputed capabilities, emphasizing that without an injunction, the violations will continue.
Strava refers to three patents: on Segments (application 2011, issued 2015), on activity heatmaps (2014/2016) and on routing by popularity (2016/2017). The company claims that Garmin used access to the integration to «study and reproduce» these solutions under its own brand. At the same time, Strava emphasizes: it does not plan to limit the synchronization of Garmin ↔ Strava data, so as not to harm joint users. Garmin, according to The Verge, did not promptly comment on the lawsuit.
Garmin launched its own segments on the Edge 1000 in 2014, and heat maps appeared in the company’s ecosystem back in 2013, before Strava filed some of its patents; this could be a line of defense for priority and novelty. Despite the long-standing integration, competition between the platforms has intensified: according to Strava’s 2024 report, the ten-year-old Forerunner 235 remained one of the most popular watches among users of the service, which only emphasizes Garmin’s bet on its own ecosystem.
Segments are custom sections of a route for comparing travel times; heat maps aggregate activity traces and feed «popular» routes. If the court upholds the lawsuit, Garmin will either have to remove the disputed features from Connect/firmware, or seek a license and change the implementation. If the court sides with Garmin, the market will defend a position of greater freedom to implement related fitness features outside of partnership agreements.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how French Navy servicemen revealed secret information about submarine patrols through the Strava fitness app.
