- The Strava and Garmin legal drama just took another big turn
- Strava has dropped its lawsuit against Garmin, and the two companies apparently reach a deal behind the scenes
- Where does that leave Suunto, which is also suing Garmin?
It looks like the legal battle between Strava (one of our best fitness apps) and Garmin (makers, of course, of the best Garmin watches) is coming to an end.
Three weeks after Strava filed a patent infringement case against Garmin, claiming that the latter’s segments and heat mapping features violate an agreement between the two companies, Strava officially dropped its lawsuit against Garmin.
Strava provided a brief update on October 21 to say it is “voluntarily dismissing” the action. We spotted this through DC Rainmaker, having been keeping an eye on the Strava-Garmin situation as it developed.
The full update says the following:
“Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), plaintiff Strava, Inc., by and through its undersigned attorney, voluntarily dismisses the above action, without prejudice.”
In practice, dismissing without prejudice means that the decision is not final, so Strava could choose to submit again in the future. For now, however, it means that any features Garmin users use that may infringe Strava’s patents are unlikely to disappear in the near future.
If you’re in the market for a new Garmin watch, Strava is no longer actively trying to stop the sale of future Garmin devices that infringe its patents, so expect plenty of Garmins to still be available in the upcoming Black Friday sales.
So is it all over?
Yes and no. After filing the lawsuit, Strava chief product officer Matt Salazar explained in a Reddit post that Garmin was trying to force him to reinforce the Garmin brand on Strava every time he used data from a Garmin watch, and said Strava would not tolerate this abuse of user data.
Strava’s Reddit community did not respond as Strava had hoped, and the company ultimately complied with Garmin’s requests. It has now also dropped its patent infringement lawsuit, leaving no further active disputes with Garmin.
However, the question of “why” still remains to be answered. There is speculation online that because Strava is going public in the near future, it wanted to reduce branding from outside sources and remove competitive features to increase its stock value, but of course, these are all rumors and we may never know for sure.
What about Suunto?
Garmin is also being sued by rival watch maker Suunto, which filed the lawsuit around the same time as Strava, although for unrelated reasons. These alleged patent infringements focus on hardware and software features, such as some golf features.
As of this writing, that lawsuit remains unresolved. This dispute aside, Suunto is releasing some excellent hardware right now (you can check out our recent review of the Suunto Race 2, where we gave it 4.5 stars) and it could become a real challenger for Garmin as a maker of the best running watches.
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