The fitness tracking giants are squaring off in court over patents, heatmaps, and segments – and it’s messy and complicated.
*Well, not every mountain biker – I don’t have a Strava account or a Garmin device.
If you’ve been out riding this week and missed the drama, buckle up: Strava has decided to sue Garmin as reported first by DC Rainmaker, demanding they stop selling virtually every fitness device they make. Yes, you read that right. The company that relies on Garmin users for the majority of its data has just bitten the hand that feeds it.
What’s Actually Happening?
On October 2nd, Strava filed a lawsuit in Colorado claiming Garmin has infringed on two key patents: one covering segments, and another covering heatmaps. They’re also alleging that Garmin violated a 2015 cooperation agreement between the two companies.
The lawsuit demands that Garmin:
- Stop selling all fitness watches and cycling computers with segment or heatmap features (which is basically everything)
- Remove these features from Garmin Connect
- Pay damages for “lost revenue and business opportunities”
For mountain bikers who rely on Garmin Edge units or Fenix watches synced to Strava, this sounds like a nightmare scenario. But before you panic, let’s dig into what’s really going on.
The Heatmap Patent: A Shaky Foundation
Strava claims they invented heatmaps for fitness activities. But the problem with that is it’s not true..
Garmin actually launched heatmaps in Garmin Connect back in early 2013 – a full year and a half before Strava even filed their patent application in December 2014.
Third-party developers were creating heatmaps from Strava’s own publicly available data as early as 2012-2013, before Strava had their own heatmap feature. Strava didn’t launch their personal heatmaps until September 2013.
So how did Strava get a patent for something that already existed? Welcome to the wonderful world of software patents, where the US Patent Office sometimes grants protection for concepts that have clear prior art. Legal experts suggest this patent could easily be invalidated in court – similar to when Wahoo tried to sue Zwift a few years back and the judge essentially said their patents should never have been granted.
The Segments Saga: A Decade-Old Grudge
The segments patent is more interesting, but equally bizarre. Here’s the timeline:
- 2009: Strava launches with user-created segments
- 2011: Strava files a patent for segments (two years after going public with the feature)
- June 2014: Garmin launches Garmin Segments on the Edge 1000
- April 2015: Garmin and Strava sign a cooperation agreement to implement Strava Live Segments on Garmin devices
- July 2015: Strava Live Segments go live on Garmin units
But, who the hell actually uses Garmin Segments? Everyone wanted Strava Segments, which is why the two companies partnered in the first place. Garmin kept their own segment feature alive as an alternative for non-paying Strava users, but it’s been a ghost town for a decade.
So why is Strava suddenly upset about something that happened ten years ago and has been a non-issue ever since? That’s where things get interesting.
The Real Story: It’s About Money and Attribution
DC Rainmaker has dug deep into this story and has a compelling theory that we can’t fault…
In July 2025, Garmin announced new API guidelines requiring partners like Strava to provide attribution when displaying data from Garmin devices. Essentially, Garmin wants a small text label like “Garmin Edge 1040” near the activity data – similar to how Google Maps shows its data source.
Strava’s Chief Product Officer went on Reddit claiming Garmin demanded their logo appear on “every single activity post, screen, graph, image, sharing card etc.” But that’s not quite accurate. Garmin’s actual guidelines show the logo is optional – simple text attribution is fine.
The irony? Strava requires the exact same thing from apps using their API. After last year’s API fiasco where Strava forced partner apps to delete millions of activities and restricted data usage, they’re now complaining about having to follow similar rules themselves.
What This Means for Mountain Bikers
Both companies have stated they don’t intend to disrupt users’ ability to sync data during the lawsuit. Strava says they hope Garmin won’t retaliate, and Garmin has simply said they don’t comment on pending litigation.
The reality is that Strava needs Garmin far more than Garmin needs Strava. Garmin users make up the majority of paying Strava subscribers and provide the bulk of the data that makes Strava’s heatmaps and route recommendations valuable. Without Garmin data flowing in, Strava’s platform would hemorrhage users and value.
Garmin, on the other hand, has been building out Garmin Connect as a comprehensive platform. They recently launched Garmin Connect+ with features like Trails+ that directly compete with Strava’s paid offerings. While Garmin Connect’s social features have never taken off, the company doesn’t rely on social networking for revenue – they sell hardware.
The IPO Angle
Strava is preparing for an IPO in 2026, and this lawsuit has all the hallmarks of a pre-IPO strategy to strengthen their intellectual property portfolio and demonstrate to investors that they can defend their competitive position.
The problem? They’ve picked a fight with a company that:
- Virtually never loses patent disputes
- Has thousands of patents (compared to Strava’s 26)
- Could easily countersue for patent infringement
- Could theoretically cut off API access and cripple Strava’s data flow
It’s a high-risk gamble that could backfire spectacularly.
The Mountain Biker’s Perspective
For those of us who actually ride bikes rather than manage tech companies, this is frustrating. Both Garmin and Strava have been making increasingly user-hostile decisions lately:
- Strava keeps raising prices, paywalling features, and alienating API partners
- Garmin has been pushing Garmin Connect+ subscriptions and restricting third-party integrations
Neither company seems particularly focused on what users actually want: reliable devices, useful features, and seamless integration between platforms.
The good news is that your Garmin will keep working, and your rides will keep syncing to Strava (for now). The bad news is that this legal battle will cost both companies money that could have been spent improving their products, and those costs will likely be passed on to users through higher subscription fees or device prices.
The Verdict (So Far)
This lawsuit appears to be less about protecting genuine innovation and more about corporate posturing ahead of Strava’s IPO. The timing is suspicious, and the whole situation has the smell of a company trying to extract concessions from a partner they depend on.
For mountain bikers, the best outcome would be a quick settlement that lets both companies get back to focusing on what matters: helping us track our rides, find new trails, and share our adventures with mates.
In the meantime, keep riding, keep uploading your activities, and maybe keep an eye on alternative platforms like Komoot (recently acquired by tech co. Bending Spoons) or Ride with GPS – just in case this corporate drama escalates into something that actually affects users.
After all, we’re here to ride bikes, not watch tech companies squabble over who invented the digital equivalent of, “that steep bit on the trail where everyone tries to go fast.”
Kudos for the amazingly detailed investigation and analysis by DC Rainmaker which first broke this story.
Garmin Connect actually is kinda a social platform, like Strava. It’s just that noone uses it like that. You can still have your activities visible to friends/everybody, and add pictures and comments and likes and all the rest of it. I don’t think you’d have to have a Garmin device to use it, I think you could sign up and just upload activities manually.
It feels like Garmin have been trying to build up the social side of their offering recently, they’ve had a few badge challenges in the past few months which seem aimed to get people to use the social features more. Also, they’ve launched Connect+ this year too. I kinda wonder if this patent trolling is Strava being nervous of Garmin playing in their sandpit.
I get the sentiment, but it’s kinda a ridiculous objection when basically all consumer electronics from the last decade+ have been that way.
The key point (Data “attribution”) is the nub of it.
To be clear, this isn’t actually Garmin or Strava’s data, it’s user’s data, captured on Garmin devices and fired to Garmin and Strava servers in exchange for signing some T&Cs that essentially waive ownership.
Strava would die on their arse if we all stopped uploading to them, they don’t have much of a product without their user’s data.
Garmin still generates a good chunk of their revenue from hardware sales, but would certainly be hurt if they sought to block Strava uploading.
They’ve cooperated (commercially) for 15 years or so and in doing so have created a mutually beneficial situation that leverages user’s data to then sell back to them as online services.
Garmin haven’t monetised their online services as aggressively (up until recently), Strava haven’t moved into the hardware side of things, two sides of a business model that was always heading towards this point. With a Strava IPO looming Garmin will be mulling the idea of buying a significant share of Strava (or they should be)… Do Strava want to be bought out by their biggest symbiotic “partner”? Probably, there’s money to be squeezed out of such a union.
Battle of The Wenkers
Garmin also make marine and aviation equipment. No doubt selling gadgets to sports enthusiasts is highly profitable or they wouldn’t be doing it but as a company they would probably carry on just fine without this sector. I bought a Garmin entirely for the navigation functionality the integration with Strava is irrelevant to me
No real issue if Garmin do buy Strava or a portion of…but I’d hope it doesn’t remove all the data and data results from Garmin Connect that there is now.
I’ve no interest in Connect+, but I am slightly concerned that this is going to remove content from the existing data feed reports available on the standard Connect.
If they do take Strava on, is this going to speed up the removal of data feed reports?
The data collected from.the devices via sensors and the unit itself will be recorded in the file that is saved. When that is uploaded to Connect, will all the same stats be visible or will they start adding a pay wall to access it – like Strava did…I hope not, but then I’m not using it for any social stuff, so things like leaderboards don’t interest me.
Seeing if I’ve improved my time over sections (segments) would be of interest, but not to go against anyone else.
(Edit, not quite true – I’m part of a couple of challenges with 2 or 3 friends and family to encourage us all to do more exercise…doesn’t really work as none of us really pay any attention to it.)
Other than the stopping selling Garmin devices but, this lawsuit really won’t impact me. I do think Strava is going to lose this, but I don’t think it’ll be a clean win.
I also don’t know why I’m posting so much on this! I’ve clearly got an interest in the whole thing, obviously just not as a user (of Strava)…kind of suggests I’m just really nosey.
Trailforks is a much more useful platform for mountain biking / exploring a new area. In France and Spain I’ve found it a great way to explore but it doesn’t seem to have nearly as many trails entered in the UK (and some of what is in there has been gone badly). The ability to add condition reports/issues/comments makes a load of sense for MTB.
strava got there first and was driven by road biking. I don’t know if they’ve changed it again but the minimum segment length they implemented a while back meant a lot of UK trails were too short to be added as segments!
garmin connect is fine but lacks the user base and I can’t see them ever building it unless strava do something stupid like blocking garmin uploads. Analogous to Twitter and enshittification in action. If Strava dumped a load of users would likely just see a fragmented market but Garmin buying it would seem a smart move at the right price. I’d guess it’s probably overvalued though. I’ve always thought their subs premium price is way too high and they’d make a lot more if it was £1 a month rather than £1 a week (only 2% of users are currently premium) although Garmin connect premium is £70 to Strava £54 so I probably don’t know anything
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/strava-statistics/
It is very difficult to get everyone to pay for something that was free before…Garmin Connect+ doesn’t (yet!) seems to have stuff that was available for free – the free stuff is all still there and available.
Entirely possible Garmin will just stop the uploads to Strava…I don’t see it as a 2-way thing, more Strava gaining.
People seem to guess that upwards of 60% of activities on Strava come from Garmin – so I kinda reckon they have the user base, if they wanted to capitalise on it…. or if their hand was forced…
Being so dependent on an external company makes Strava look weak. It’s a co-dependency, but Strava needs Garmin more than the reverse, as Garmin is a far larger and more diversified business.
Strava must see the continued development of Connect+ as another move towards the eventual aim of reducing its dependence (and thereby weakening Strava) by setting up a viable alternative platform. It already does everything I need – logs mileage, elevation and activities, and it would only take a small shift of users towards its own segment system to cause harm.
Perhaps Garmin is scenting the opportunity to take control of Strava fully at some point once it becomes a publicly-traded company. It could even be that the current owners see this as inevitable at some point, and just want to prop up the company’s value until they get through the IPO.
It’s would be amusing to see the way they bullied, or bought out and buried, smaller apps that relied on their data, being revisited on them. There’s always a bigger fish.
This thread prompted me to look at Connect a bit more (I’ve got it but never really look at it). I looked at the segments. They seem OK and I’m only really interested in comparing my own times but one thing seems to be missing – the ability to record a segment as an ebike segment or ride.
I don’t mind Strava, getting all those follow requests from young super models makes me feel special.
🙃
A suggestion for that – create a new entry under your Gear settings for an ebike. After you record your activity, make sure you set the gear to the right bike.
Isn’t as clear cut but can then be filtered on.
I must not be fast enough to have this happen to me 🙁
It’s all speculation. And both businesses have contributed to the other’s success, people bought a Garmin device because they wanted better recording of activities for Strava, people who owned Garmin kit because of their running or cycling interest were nudged towards taking up a a Strava sub… Connect+ might be a late attempt to monetise Garmin’s user base, or just a pop to scare Strava into doing something rash (seems to have succeeded at the later). All corporations want to eat their “strategic partners" and competitors, there’s market share and efficiencies to be claimed and executives can take credit for such things on their CVs. Personally I think Garmin are in a stronger position, and TBH I thing Strava probably expected to be bought out by someone else from the online tech sphere sooner (not some dusty old hardware company that they’ve drifted into having a reliance on). they’re a mature enough business now that chasing VC money is out, and being (user) data driven the next thing expected of them is bolting on AI nonsense… Everything is stable and relatively static both product and market share wise, but free-marketers don’t believe in homeostasis, either endless growth or ever-increasing acquisitions.
I’ve found that I can go into Connect and change my ride from one of the three options I can choose to ride in on my Garmin Explore 2 ….. this device only lets me choose from – Road, Gravel, Indoor. I chose Gravel (but can rename it on the device as MTB but this doesn’t affect how it loads into Connect…. it still loads a Gravel.
Once it’s loaded into Connect I can click a dropdown and choose eMountainBiking. Once I’ve done that I can no longer see a Segments tab and can’t see anyway to create an eMTB segment.
None of this matters once it’s in Strava as I just change it to eMTB. But on Connect there seems no way to do this and I don’t want to contaminate non-ebike segments with my rides. Hope that makes sense and if I’ve missed something I’d be interested to know.
maybe it’s device dependent but on the 539 I have set up 3 profiles with inch have different screen displays – mtb, e bike and road. I’m guessing I specified the type of bike for each as they automatically go into the right category in Strava and garmin connect.
That may well be right. However, if you then have it set for ebike can you see any segments in your ride and is there a way you can create one?
I can’t answer your questions yet but this discussion has made me look at Garmin segments and create one so I can check some of this. You definitely can’t create a segment from an e-bike activity, next time I take an e-bike out I will find out whether my segment pops up for me.
I used to like having Strava live segments pop up on my Garmin until Strava took away the downhill ones, it would be great if I can replace them with the Garmin equivalent and also great if I can use the same segment regardless of whether I’m on an e-bike or regular bike
Garmin segments do pop up as you approach them….biggest issue I’ve found so far is recreating them…I’m not sure the GPS points are the same as they are on Strava and it allows you to jump between each point that is recorded – useful to have recording as every second and not smart.
Not a massive issue really for me as I’m just creating them for my own reference, but if Garmin Connect grows and people start adding segments I hope Garmin will flag when a segment already exists and will prevent the multiples of very similar route as found on Strava.
for my personal use I’m not too worried, I just liked seeing how my time compared to my previous best once I’d passed the end of a segment.
Can’t see it happening unless Strava manage to completely destroy themselves and even then I’d hope Trailforks were more likely to fill the gap
That’s definitely never going to happen. Garmin Connect is probably the only serious contender to Strava, because multi-sport. Even if it was just cycling, trailforks wouldn’t get a look-in, it’d be komoot or rwgps.
It was a rather optimistic comment on my part but Trailforks are trying to be multi activity and are at least not tied to any device manufacturer. But really, if it took off I’m sure Outside would start the ‘enshitification’
Well if the previously reported estimate is true a large (more than half?) chunk of “Strava’s” data comes from Garmin devices, Garmin’s products are ubiquitous and their customers mostly use connect for uploading by default.
I don’t believe most people are “curating” their activity history on both connect and strava, I know I just upload to connect and let it push the data on to strava, I only edit and share information via Strava because most of my friends that do cycling and other sports use it and it’s SM functionality was what differentiated Strava earlier on. Garmin could buy out strava, gradually turn connect orange and merge the two apps and ther would be some whinging but so long as they kept calling it ‘strava’ it would carry on.
Trying to compete might work, but it’s never going
To yield the same market share, and they’ll never manage to steal acquire the data of non-Garmin users, buy strava out and they get a bonus ~40% more yummy exploitable user data…
Really? that buggy sack of crap is barely any use to it’s own target audience (things may have improved since I last tried it TBF). They may not be perfect but Strava and Garmin’s mapping and routing features are relatively good and cover multiple types of activities.
These days the expected features include a social media feed, mapping, heatmaps, rout finders, data analysis, etc. very few other apps offer all of that, and any that do probably rely access to Strava APK access.
One way out of it would surely be for Garmin to open up the operating system of their devices. Just build an OS that does the bare minimum of connecting to ant+ / BT devices, collates data then allows ‘apps’ to operate on the device using that data. You could then download an app that worked for your type of riding:
Komoot – leisure / audax / whatever
Trailforks – Rad dudes
Strava – cycling clubs and stravasholes.
e.g if I was heading out on a 300km audax or bikiepacking adventure I could open the komoot app and the route would be there, the routing would all be done by komoot, etc, etc. If I was heading out on a roadie clubrun then I’d open Strava and it would sync the route from the clubs page, and because everyone else was using the same ‘app’ the live tracking would actually work. N0o one i know actually uses garmin group ride because there is no integration with strava which seems to be where group rides are now advertised and the routes published.
If they actually did that and it worked I might even contemplate paying the ‘premium’ subscription to the apps I wanted. But the current setup is just infuriating enough to make me resent paying any of them.