Strava vs. Garmin – The climbdown – Part II – Downfall

Updated: 17 October 2025

In a note to all media on 14 October 2025, including this site, Strava confirmed earlier today that it has agreed to Garmin’s longstanding requirement to properly attribute data sourced using Garmin’s API.

Unfortunately, we aren’t able to comment on ongoing disputes. While we don’t agree with the extensive branding Garmin is forcing, uninterrupted connectivity for the subset of our community that uses Garmin remains our top priority, and we have also decided that we will give similar attribution to all of our device partners going forward to be fair. Our aim is to make branding as unintrusive as possible, and we believe it is the right thing to do in light of the mandatory changes that Garmin is asking all developers to implement by November 1st. [Strava, Press Release]

Unpicking The Statement

Strava’s official statement is poorly worded. However, it seems that the company admits it has no choice but to comply with Garmin’s requirement that it will now soon include wording similar to this: “Insights derived in part from Garmin MARQ-sourced data”.

No Garmin logo. No essay. No adverts. That’s all that’s needed: a simple sentence stating where the data came from. This is very similar, in fact, to what Strava requires of people sourcing data from its platform.

This is the next step on Strava’s side of the climbdown. It became the obvious next move after the company told its partners last week that they also had to comply with Garmin’s API citation.

Strava gets developers to comply

How did we get here?

The Strava vs. Garmin dispute was last week’s biggest cycling and sports tech news, covered by Road.CC, GCN, and this site, among many others.

Two patent infringement disputes (that appear groundless or pointless) came to light at the start of this month, and, digging deeper, we discovered that Strava also alleges breach of contract by Garmin over an agreement the two parties signed in the mid-2010s.

It seemed every cyclist who’d ever used Strava was united in disbelief that the sport’s biggest app and ride-sharing platform was suing the single most important (by far) data supplier — Garmin. A friend said to me, “They do realise that if Garmin pulls the plug on the workout data, Strava will cease to have a business the following day, right?”

Strava incenses Reddit

Other Current Legal Cases

Several other legal cases involving wearable and fitness companies have started this year as the brands position themselves for the future:

• Whoop sues Polar for a copycat product – Polar LOOP (Oct 2025)
• Suunto sues Garmin for infringing on 5 core patents (Oct 2025)

What Now – Opinion

Following the instruction to its own developers, compliance with Garmin’s (reasonable) API citation requirement is the next step of Strava’s climbdown. This will certainly happen before the end of the month.

Everyone with two spoked wheels and a spare inner tube knew Strava’s position was untenable. At least the company has now backed down from a non-compliant action that would have destroyed its business had it failed to attribute Garmin data on 1st November.

Now Strava has to decide if it wants to keep suing Garmin. Garmin would be foolish to behave spitefully and turn off the data tap to Strava due to the case. That would open it up to further and more serious legal consequences. Garmin is not foolish.

So, the legal cases will likely drag on for some time. I would imagine that the Strava IPO planned for 2026 cannot proceed while there is an active legal case. How could anyone buy Strava shares knowing it has four legal actions against its single most important data supplier? For that reason alone, I doubt the cases will remain active for more than six months.

The breach of contract case might have legal merit; no one really knows. That said, everyone knows it lacks commercial merit and commercial common sense. I expect the next step for Strava will be to drop the Heatmap patent infringement. Strava could continue and try to get Garmin to drop its segment feature (the second infringement case), but what’s the best outcome? Garmin stops a feature that no one cares about, and Strava succeeds in annoying its leading partner even more.

In the Court of Public Relations, Strava has already well and truly lost, and its position is irredeemable.

Stay tuned for the next exciting and exasperating instalment.

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Last Updated on 28 May 2026 by the5krunner

the5krunner

tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID