Strava is accusing Garmin of infringing on a pair of patents relating to segments and heatmaps, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Colorado on Tuesday.
The two companies entered an agreement in 2015 to jointly develop Garmin’s segments, a concept Strava filed a patent for in 2011 (which it introduced in 2009). Strava claims Garmin later copied the feature.
Strava also believes that Garmin has infringed on the heatmap feature, which Strava applied for two patents in 2014 and 2016 (which were granted in 2016 and 2017). Garmin introduced a similar map feature in 2013, the same year Strava rolled out its own heatmaps.
The lawsuit notes that Strava “suffered damages, including lost revenue and business opportunities, erosion of competitive differentiation and network effects, harm to goodwill, and unjust gains to Garmin.”
The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado tells a deeper story on Strava’s claims. The company says that patents 9,116,922, 9,297,651 (and ancillary patent 9,778,053) were violated specifically as it pertains to
matching GPS segments to accompanying routes along with users creating map activity preferences. Strava also notes that the features developed by Garmin have been implemented in the Garmin Connnect website, app and functions on numerous Garmin fitness devices.
Strava and Garmin have a long history of working together, with Garmin listed as one of over 100 partners that allows users to upload and sync workout data to Strava’s platform.
Heatmaps are a core feature in Strava and allows users to see an overlay of popular routes that runners and cyclists have used. Area with high traffic are shown with brighter, or hotter, colors while less popular areas are show in darker blue. But the maps provide users with an idea of how to create quality routes or refine existing ones.
Strava applied for the heatmap-related patent on December 15th, 2014, which was granted in 2016. Both companies rolled out a similar feature in 2013, with Garmin apparently debuting its maps early that year. Strava’s heatmaps arrived in September 2013.
The lawsuit notes that Strava informed Garmin in July about the patent infringements and “have intentionally or recklessly continued their infringing acts, making this an exceptional case and warranting enhanced damages.”
Meanwhile, Strava’s segments patent was filed on March 31st, 2011 but not issued until August 2015 despite the feature being available since 2009. Segments allows users to create custom points along a route, name the segment, compile data associated with the activity and, if made public, the information is available to other user who can have their workout ranked along a growing list of activities.
Strava says that Garmin created its own version of the GPS-assisted feature in 2014, which was later integrated in Garmin Connect and accessed by Garmin’s wearable devices and bike computers.
In 2015 the companies signed a “Master Cooperation Agreement,” that outlined a working relationship to help develop Garmin’s segment feature. However, Garmin also agreed to use Strava’s segments on its devices and platforms that year. But part of the agreement states that Garmin would not be allowed to show Strava segments and Garmin segments at the same time on its platform. And Strava believed that Garmin would stop developing the segments feature.
Strava’s lawsuit does not name a specific figure for damages but is asking that Garmin not be allowed continue to used heatmap and segments and to stop selling devices that use the technology.
In a post on Reddit on Thursday, Strava’s chief product officer Matt Salazar attempted to clarify why the company took action against Garmin.
Salazar said that recent Garmin changes aimed at developers gave a November 1 deadline to implement changes or lose access to Garmin’s underlying architecture for partners.
“On July 1st, Garmin announced new developer guidelines for all of its API partners, including Strava, that required the Garmin logo to be present on every single activity post, screen, graph, image, sharing card etc.,” the post said. “We have until November 1st to comply, and if not, Garmin has threatened to cut off access to their API, stopping all Garmin activities from being uploaded to Strava.”
“Unfortunately we could not justify to our users complying with the new guidelines. As such, we have tried to resolve this situation with Garmin over the course of the past five months, including proposing additional attribution across the platform in a less intrusive way, but to no avail,” Salazar’s post later read.
Responses to the post were mixed, with a large number of comments noting that Strava’s logo appears when workouts are exported and shared to social media.
