Strava drops Garmin lawsuit just three weeks after filing

And just like that, it’s over. Strava has pulled back from its legal battle against Garmin. 21 days after filing the original lawsuit, the company has voluntarily dismissed the matter, ending what was shaping up to be a very public dispute.

The court filing submitted today is remarkably brief. Strava simply states that it is dismissing the case without prejudice, meaning it could file again in the future. Garmin never filed a formal response, though today’s docket shows it officially listed its attorneys of record. That entry came just before the case was dropped, suggesting most of what happened took place in private.

Here’s the entry from this morning.

“Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), Plaintiff Strava, Inc., by and through its undersigned counsel, voluntarily dismisses the above-captioned action, without prejudice. “

The background

The case, filed in late September, accused Garmin of infringing on two Strava patents. These included technology related to route generation and live segments. These are features Garmin has long supported through integrations and its own devices. The lawsuit wasn’t small in scope. Strava requested the court halt the sale of Garmin’s wearables and bike computers that allegedly violated the patents.

At the time, an official Reddit post from its executive team attempted to frame Garmin as an uncooperative partner. The post claimed Garmin was exploiting its access to Strava data without proper attribution, using features the company said were built on Strava’s intellectual property.

But the legal and public campaign didn’t go down well. The Reddit thread drew scepticism from developers and users who were quick to point out inconsistencies. Most notably, Strava had recently imposed its own attribution rules on developers using its API. That made it harder to argue that Garmin’s branding requirements were out of line.

Garmin’s own API guidelines don’t demand much. A logo isn’t required. A short line of text naming Garmin as the data source is usually enough. Developers can even choose where to place it.

Days after filing the lawsuit, Strava updated its own API agreement to require third-party apps using Garmin-sourced data to follow Garmin’s branding rules. This started to look like a retreat. Then, in the middle of the shift, a widespread AWS outage caused Garmin to disappear from the Strava app altogether. In Facebook groups and on Reddit, Garmin loyalists accused Strava of cutting ties.

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All of this has taken a toll on Strava’s reputation. It tried to paint Garmin as the aggressor, but public sentiment quickly turned. Many users made it clear that if forced to choose, they’d drop Strava before dropping their Garmin device.

The lawsuit is gone but the story isn’t over

It’s still unclear why Strava backed off. There’s been no official statement. After all the noise, the company just went quiet.

What’s left behind is a bit of a mess. Particularly in regards to Strava’s relationship with Garmin. That partnership has been going strong for more than a decade. Garmin isn’t waiting around either. They’ve just announced a fresh integration with Komoot, a direct competitor to Strava.

Plenty of people are also starting to question what’s going on inside Strava’s leadership team. Some think the lawsuit was always meant to be dropped and was just a stunt for IPO attention. But if that was the plan, it backfired. Strava picked a fight with its most important hardware partner, lost user trust, and didn’t come out with much to show for it.

It appears, Strava wants to be seen as more than just a platform that sits on top of Garmin, Apple, Wahoo and Coros. But the last few weeks have made it obvious how much it still depends on them. Without those data sources, Strava becomes just another fitness app with less to offer.

Now that the case is gone and Garmin attribution is mandatory, things might quiet down for a bit. But the damage is already done. Strava has work to do if it wants to fix what just got broken.

via DCrainmaker

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