Strava has voluntarily dismissed its patent lawsuit against Garmin, ending a short-lived legal push just 21 days after filing the case.
In a single-line notice lodged on Tuesday, 21 October, Strava told the US District Court in Colorado: "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."
Court records show Garmin had not yet responded to the lawsuit, and only filed notices of appearance for its legal team on the day of Strava's dismissal.
Joe Lindsey
The lawsuit, which Strava filed on 30 September 2025, alleged Garmin's infringement of Strava patents covering heatmap routing and live segments and sought an injunction that, if granted, could have halted sales of a wide range of Garmin wearables and bike computers.
Industry reaction to the case was sceptical about both its strength and the strategy. "They poked a bear that makes no sense from a smart standpoint. If Garmin turns off connection to Strava, I would argue Strava goes out of business in a matter of days; they are so heavily reliant on Garmin," Ray Maker (DC Rainmaker), the tech industry expert who broke the story, told Escape last week. A patent attorney Escape also spoke with also questioned Strava's strategy and predicted that the case was about something else than patents, and would be settled outside the courtroom.
Suvi Loponen
One of the suggested motives for the lawsuit was Garmin's new application programming interface (API) rules. Despite initial resistance, Strava last week told developers it would comply with Garmin's attribution rules and extend similar labels to data from other brands, then quietly amended its own API Agreement on 9 October to add a "Garmin Data Attribution" clause that passes those requirements downstream. In the same week, Strava for the first time publicly confirmed plans to move ahead with an IPO.
While dropping the case removes the overhanging lawsuit, it remains to be seen what effect it has had on the decades-long partnership of the two tech giants. Since Strava's claim, Garmin has been tightening its ties with rivals, such as Komoot.
Joe Lindsey
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