That’s a very good write up by Ray.
But the actual reason doesn’t make sense, particularly after Strava’s announcement last year when it started cutting off other companies from using ‘its’ data.
I need the ‘eating popcorn’ meme
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I wonder if maybe Strava has a new product in the pipeline that might compete with Garmin (or a partnership being drawn up with an existing Garmin competitor)?
They launched the Strava bike pretty much out of the blue so it’s not so much of a stretch to wonder whether a headunit might be on the cards?
If so then disrupting the usefulness and usability of the existing Garmin to Strava link / upload might help pave the way for better take up and early adoption of any such competitor product?
in the meantime 
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there is a strava bike? are you confusing that with the zwift bike? they are both orange
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Correct me if I’m wrong (please do, I’m serious about that) but this seems like a sort of cut and dry instance of prior art by the examples Ray has given and thus a judge would be likely to invalidate Strava’s patent by virtue of a very clear “they didn’t do this first.” Unlike technology patents that might require someone to be familiar with the tech in order to judge whether the patent has been infringed upon or is valid, when it simply comes down to a matter of dates for prior art I feel like that makes a much more understandable case for a judge that doesn’t require anyone to know the inner workings of whatever the patent is for. I worked in the high end musical instrument industry for a while and there are patents filed for products that as soon as anyone cared to challenge them would fall apart due to prior art from decades, if not a century, earlier. The good thing for the companies holding those patents is that nobody can afford to bring suit because they’re all broke. But Ray has pretty much made Garmin’s case for them and by their purported success in such litigation might not be inclined to just roll over and cut a deal. Not while whatever good will that existed between the 2 companies is being squandered and not while it’s clear they have the upper hand. Not to mention they can afford to fight it and have little to lose monetarily or otherwise.
Yup, that’s what I have done.
Previously, they shot themselves in the foot and kneecap. Now another self-inflicted gunshot wound in the belly.
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I thought it was October 1st, not April 1st???
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I’m just speaking from my experience and it doesn’t exactly relate to this situation. But my experience was in the GPS tracking tech space, so it’s not a complete stretch. We got sued by a company claiming they had the patent for geofencing (basically putting a virtual area around a GPS location and alerting when a GPS device entered/exited said area). It’s something the entire industry had done long before the patent existed, but somehow this small company got a patent on some aspect of geofencing and they leveraged a very, very loose connection with what everyone in the industry was doing and sued pretty much everyone with deep pockets. I don’t know how many paid, but we did. The legal departments in fortune 100 companies are often happy to cut $500k checks all day long so that they can stay focused on the big stuff. We were a smaller subsidiary and cared very much about that $500k, but lawyers often rule the world at this big companies. And you can say it’s obvious that things like segments and heat maps aren’t complex technological things, but it might as well be rocket science for those who aren’t close to it.
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So if I’m understanding this right (which I’m probably not). Garmin wants apps who pull data from their site to say so. name their source (like Trainer Road does already). But Strava doesn’t want to, so they thought they’d get in there first and sue Garmin for a breach of a patent for stuff that Garmin has been doing for 10 years plus and might have been doing before Strava even existed. The secondary motive might be Garmin are doing it for free (well free if you’ve bought their computer) and Strava wants to charge for it.
I have wanted to get rid of Strava for so long but we literally run a 700+ local cycling club through it that has weekly rides with multiple routes etc. I don’t know of anyone else that has that good of a platform to do this with.
I dont like/use it for anything else besides that.
This is one of my big use cases too, though my club isn’t as big. It’s still a nice way to manage rides and provide all information in one location. I suppose there are workarounds off Strava, however so many people are already on Strava so it’s a convenient and functional way to alert people about scheduled rides, track RSVPs and provide route files.
If they didn’t have this, I perhaps would have jumped ship from Strava a long time ago because of their shenanigans.
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For Strava it’s April 1st every day of the week 
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I just set my Strava to not re-up next summer when my year is over. Done giving them money to come out with a bunch of features I don’t need and still not giving me the ones I’ve been requesting for half a decade. Why they can’t just give us a filter for our feed is driving me crazy. I don’t want to see pickleball or lawn mowing and should be able to control that without muting someone completely. This lawsuit is just the last straw, they clearly don’t care about us if they want to go after Garmin, a company many of us use.
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Nice legal expedition pushing well into the upper frivolous zones! Your hard work is paying off. Keep up the consistent training and your gains will surprise you.
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My favorite line in the article: the judge basically said “Dude, you probably shouldn’t have been granted the patent in the first place”
You don’t hear the term ‘Dude’ used enough in legal parlance these days
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This is going over well for strava on reddit…
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Strava has been committed to cutting off their nose to spite their face on a semi annual basis for years now.
I used to being a paying customer but cancelled 3 or 4 poor decisions ago. For those who are wondering, no I haven’t missed it at all.
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Yep, and Ridewithgps is also an excellent alternative for that type of thing.
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You can, but I would guess in any decent size cycling club there are going to be a bunch of people who don’t use Garmin because they have Wahoo, Hammerhead or something else. Strava being technology agnostic is handy.
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I can’t believe that TR still relies on these clowns for its data importing!
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