- The Strava and Garmin legal drama just took another big twist
- Strava has dropped its lawsuit against Garmin, with the two companies seemingly settling 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, stating the latter’s segments and heatmaps features violate an agreement between the two companies, Strava has officially dropped its lawsuit against Garmin.
Strava filed a brief update on October 21 to say it “voluntarily dismisses” the action. We spotted this via DC Rainmaker, having kept an eye on the Strava-Garmin situation as it developed.
The full update reads as follows:
“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.”
In practice, dismissing without prejudice means the decision is not final, so Strava could choose to file again in the future. However, for now, it means that any features Garmin users are making use of that could potentially infringe on 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 halt the sale of future Garmin devices infringing on 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’s chief product officer Matt Salazar explained in a Reddit post that Garmin was trying to force it to beef up the Garmin branding on Strava whenever it used data from a Garmin watch, and said Strava wouldn’t stand for this abuse of user data.
Strava’s Reddit community did not respond the way Strava expected, and the company eventually complied with Garmin’s requests. Now it’s also withdrawn its patent infringement lawsuit, leaving no further active spats with Garmin.
However, the question of “why” remains to be answered. There’s speculation online that because Strava is going public in the near future, it wanted to reduce branding from external sources and nix competing features to boost the value of its shares – but of course this is all hearsay, and we may never know for sure.
What about Suunto?
Garmin is also being sued by rival watch-maker Suunto, which filed around the same time as Strava, although for unrelated reasons. These supposed patent infringements center around hardware and software features, such as some golfing features.
At the time of writing, that lawsuit remains unresolved. This dispute aside, Suunto is releasing some great hardware at the moment – you can check out our recent review of the Suunto Race 2, in which we gave it 4.5 stars – and could become a genuine challenger to Garmin as a maker of the best running watches.
The best Garmin watches for all budgets
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matt.evans@futurenet.com (Matt Evans)
