Strava sues Garmin over heatmaps, routing and segments patents

Strava filed a lawsuit against Garmin on September 30, 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, alleging that the hardware maker infringed multiple Strava patents covering so-called segments and popularity routing based on aggregated activity heatmaps and breached a 2015 Master Cooperation Agreement between the companies. Strava is seeking monetary damages and a permanent injunction that would bar Garmin from making, using, selling or importing devices and software that implement the contested features.

The complaint identifies three patents at issue. Two related patents, U.S. patents 9,297,651 and 9,778,053, are described as covering the generation of user preference activity maps, commonly known as heatmaps, and the use of those maps to influence route suggestions. The second asserted patent, U.S. patent 9,116,922, covers the segment system used to define stretches of road or trail, match user efforts and rank performance on leaderboards. Strava says Garmin incorporated similar functionality into Garmin Connect and into device features over several years and that Garmin’s actions harmed Strava through lost revenue, erosion of competitive differentiation...