Strava vs Garmin: The IP marathon that turned into a fun run
If you go for a run or a bike ride and don’t record it on your Garmin and upload it to Strava immediately after, does it even count? As they say, if it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen!
But what happens when there’s a threat of that no longer being possible?
On 30 September 2025, Strava filed a lawsuit against Garmin, which threatened to change the way millions around the globe record and store their workouts. However, less than one month later, on 21 October, Strava submitted via another court filing stating that it ‘voluntarily dismisses the above-captioned action, without prejudice’.
Megan McCaughey, trainee solicitor in our commercial team, examines Stava's lawsuit against Garmin and the warnings it raises about protecting your IP.
A brief history of Strava and Garmin
Strava describes itself as ‘the app for active people’. With over 150 million reported users across more than 185 countries, Strava uses GPS data from your device to log your activities, collating details such as speed, distance, routes and elevation. Strava also allows users to upload these activities along with photos to their profiles, where followers can comment or ‘give Kudos’. Think Instagram, but for sports.
Garmin on the other hand, is a technology company, best known for making GPS-enabled devices such as smartwatches and bike computers, for the fitness industry. They also have a platform, Garmin Connect, which enables users to sync with Strava so that their workouts are automatically uploaded.
The pair have collaborated since 2015, under the terms of a Master Co-operation Agreement (MCA). Strava claims the MCA granted Garmin ‘a limited, revocable, non‑sublicensable license’, and that Garmin could 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’
However, in September, Strava alleged that Garmin had infringed patents relating to two of its key features: segments and heat maps.
The Infringement Claims
Segments
Strava’s segments feature allows users to create virtual start and finish lines for a particular section of a map. Whenever a user then records GPS activity within that section, the data from that particular section is extracted and added to a leaderboard. This allows users to compare their statistics (or efforts as they’re commonly referred to in the Strava community) with other users who have completed the same segment.
Segments are a flagship feature for Strava and so they filed a patent for the feature in 2011.
Garmin introduced ‘Garmin segments’ on their devices in 2014, however, the feature proved unpopular. The fact remained that people liked the Strava segments. The terms of the MCA meant that Garmin users had access to information such as start and end points of upcoming Strava segments on their devices during their activities.
In the lawsuit documents, Strava allege that ‘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’.
This implies that Strava expected Garmin to stop expanding their segments feature on its devices and instead exclusively use Strava segments.
The MCA was not made publicly available, so we are unable to comment directly on what the agreement specifies; however, the Garmin Segments feature appears to have done no real damage to Strava. Garmin Segments are an alternative for users who don't pay for a Strava subscription and they don't allow them to compete with those in the Strava universe. Any reference to Segments is universally associated with Strava, not Garmin.
Ultimately, the infringement claim raised two questions: Why did Strava care about a feature which was not a realistic threat? And even if they did care, why did it take until 2025 for Strava to raise this as an issue?
Heatmaps
The other area of contention related to heatmaps, a feature which utilises user data to generate a map showing popular routes across the globe.
Strava have two patents in relation to this feature; the first concerns technology which collects users’ data to create the heatmap of popular routes, and the second relates to the software’s ability to plot routes between a user-specified start and end point, incorporating popular segments from the heatmap.
Strava filed the patents in December 2014; however, multiple sources insist that Garmin actually introduced their own heatmaps feature to Garmin Connect over a year earlier in 2013.
Therefore, whether there was ever a realistic chance that Strava would be successful in arguing this point, or whether a judge would’ve questioned the validity of the patents (like what happened in another similar case between Zwift and Wahoo) is unclear.
What did Strava want to achieve?
In the original filing, Strava requested that there be a court-imposed restriction on the sale of the Garmin products in question, which could have resulted in almost all Garmin watches and bike computers being taken off the market. This caused mass panic amongst athletes and users, with many fearing they would no longer be able to simultaneously record and upload their workouts.
What does it mean now that the case has been dropped?
For Strava and Garmin users, the dismissal marks the end of a very short-lived and strange legal tussle. Users can continue to use both platforms in synchronisation with each other and compete with other users.
It also means we will never know the result of what would have happened if this had gone to trial. Would the court have agreed that Garmin had gone beyond the scope of the MCA, or would a judge have questioned the legitimacy of Strava’s claims? Would Garmin really have had to stop selling its industry-leading products?
What the case does teach us is that it is important to make sure that your IP is properly protected to avoid any infringement claims. Secondly, if you do suspect another party is pushing the boundaries, it’s probably best to make sure that is the case before launching an attack.
For more information on protecting your IP, contact Megan McCaughey today via 0191 211 7950 or [email protected]