DENVER (BRAIN) — Strava and Suunto are each suing Garmin for patent infringement.
Strava is suing the GPS brand in a Colorado court, saying Garmin's segments and leaderboards features violate a patent licensing agreement the two companies reached in 2015.
Suunto, a Finnish company that sells fitness watches and related gear, is suing Garmin in a Texas court. It charges that Garmin fitness watches infringe on five of its patents.
The Strava suit
Garmin made a 2015 agreement with Strava to use Strava Live Segments on its bike computers, watches and software. Garmin and Strava became competitors in March this year when Garmin launched Connect+, a premium subscription version of its free Garmin Connect fitness and health tracking software.
Strava's suit filed in Colorado District Court on Tuesday alleges that Garmin violates the terms of the 2015 agreement in part by offering Garmin-branded segments and leaderboards on its devices and software, in addition to the Strava-branded Live Segments.
A Garmin spokesperson said the company doesn't comment on pending litigation.
On the Strava subreddit on Thursday, Strava’s Chief Product Officer Matt Salazar pointed to a different dispute, apparently not part of the civil complaint. Salazar wrote that the dispute stemmed from new developer guidelines Garmin issued July 1. Salazar said the new guidelines “required the Garmin logo to be present on every single activity post, screen, graph, image, sharing card etc. 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.”
Salazar said the requirement was “blatant advertising” that detracted from Strava users’ experience. “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,” he said.
The suit does not mention the new developer guidelines. Strava is based in San Francisco and Garmin is headquartered in Kansas. Strava said it sued in the Denver court in part because Garmin has an R&D facility in Boulder. The court on Wednesday set a scheduling conference for Dec. 4.
The Suunto suit
Suunto sued in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas last month.
Its complaint charges that a long list of Garmin watches, including Marq, fenix, Epix, Instinct, Venu and Forerunner models, infringe on five of its patents. The patents relate to tracking golf shots, measuring a user’s respiratory rate, and positioning antennas and antenna assemblies inside a watch.
The Eastern Texas court has a long reputation for being "plaintiff-friendly" in patent cases. While neither company has facilities in the district or Texas, Garmin sells products in the district through regional retailers and online, Suunto's complaint noted.
