Garmin Sued – All The Details: A Patent Fight Which, If Lost, Will Affect Your Watch

TL;DR – A small Texas company is taking on the tech giants, accusing them of patent infringement (fall detection algorithms) — Garmin owners have a lot at stake

Updated: 20 January 2026

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) voted on January 8 to investigate whether Garmin, Apple, Google, and Samsung have infringed patents held by UnaliWear, a US-based (Austin, TX) startup behind the Kanega Watch, a safety device built for the elderly at risk of falls. The dispute centres on how falls are detected—a feature now standard across Garmin’s lineup and most of its key competitors.

The Story Behind The Company Behind the Lawsuit

UnaliWear is not a household name. Its founder, Jean Anne Booth, previously built and sold two companies: Luminary Micro, which was acquired by Texas Instruments in 2009 as one of that year’s top venture-backed acquisitions, and Intrinsity, which made graphics chips for the iPad, was snapped up by Apple in 2010.

Booth came out of retirement in 2013 after watching her 80-year-old mother refuse to wear traditional medical alert pendants, finding them unsightly and stigmatising. She set out to build something better, and so came the Kanega Watch, a medical alert device that looks like an ordinary wristwatch but can detect falls and connect wearers to emergency responders around the clock.

So far, so good.

Most fall detection systems had been previously developed and trained on simulated falls—young, healthy people deliberately tumbling in labs. RealFall took a different approach, training its AI on actual fall data collected from elderly Kanega Watch wearers. The system learns to distinguish genuine falls from false alarms caused by everyday movements, such as sitting down hard or dropping into a chair.

UnaliWear claims its machine learning methods behind this distinction are protected by several patents, and that the major smartwatch makers have adopted similar approaches without paying licensing fees.

What This Means for Garmin Watches

Garmin’s Incident Detection appears on nearly every watch the company sells: Forerunner, Fenix, and even Edge cycling computers.

Here’s how Fall Detection works with Garmin: sensors track movement and location. When the device detects a pattern consistent with a crash or fall—a sudden, violent deceleration followed by stillness—it triggers an alert. A countdown gives the wearer 30 seconds to cancel. If time runs out, the Garmin Connect app texts emergency contacts with the wearer’s name, GPS coordinates, and a live tracking link.

UnaliWear is fighting on two fronts.

The ITC investigation offers the faster path and a powerful weapon: the ability to block imports. If the commission rules against Garmin and issues an exclusion order, customs agents could start stopping watches at the border.

Separately, UnaliWear filed lawsuits in federal courts last December—Garmin in California, Apple and Google in Texas’s Western District, and Samsung in the Eastern District. These cases move more slowly but can award monetary damages.

The strategy is clear: win at the ITC, then use that victory as leverage in courtroom battles and settlement talks. Garmin must respond by late January. Discovery will consume most of 2026, with an initial decision expected in early 2027.

Why UnaliWear Might Win

The ITC has grown increasingly willing to back smaller American companies against tech giants.

The most instructive case is Masimo’s battle with Apple over blood oxygen sensors. In late 2023, the ITC ordered certain Apple Watch models blocked from import. The Biden administration let the ban stand. Apple pulled affected watches from stores, scrambled to redesign the feature, and eventually won customs approval for a workaround—but last November, a California jury still hit Apple with a $634 million punishment, one of the largest patent awards ever in consumer electronics.

More recently, Finnish smart ring maker Oura won an ITC case against RingConn and Ultrahuman. Rather than accept a sales ban, RingConn settled by agreeing to pay Oura royalties under a multi-year license. That’s the same type of result UnaliWear is after.

This isn’t a nuisance lawsuit from a patent troll.

The Likely Outcome

If the ITC finds that Garmin has infringed on UnaliWear’s patents, the company faces a choice: pay a license fee or stop importing most of its watches until Incident Detection is removed or redesigned.

Given how central fall detection is to Garmin’s safety features, a prolonged import ban is surely not an option the company can consider. The more probable path seems to be negotiating a licensing deal, paying royalties, and moving on.

A Company Under Legal Siege

The UnaliWear case adds more pressure on the sportswatch leader. In late 2025, both Strava and Suunto filed separate patent lawsuits against Garmin. The former’s case has been dropped.

Suunto’s case is broader. It claims Garmin infringed five patents covering respiratory rate measurement, automatic golf swing detection, and antenna designs found across nearly every watch line. Between these three lawsuits, Garmin faces legal challenges touching virtually every product in its wearables business.

What This Means for You

Should Garmin settle, Garmin merely incurs slight reputational damage and the costs associated with the case, such as fines and licensing.

Unlike the Apple case, where a small number of people really want the SpO2, I don’t see any reason for anyone considering buying a Garmin to hold off.

Garmin, Apple, Google, and Samsung have not publicly commented on the merits of UnaliWear’s claims.

Last Updated on 31 January 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.