Strava pulls the plug on its Garmin lawsuit after just 21 days

Strava’s big attack on Garmin didn’t last long. On Tuesday, the former filed paperwork to dismiss its patent infringement lawsuit against the latter, according to DC Rainmaker. The battle, which included a “Setting the record straight” Reddit post from Strava’s chief product officer, lasted all of 21 days.

The lawsuit accused Garmin of infringing on patents related to heat maps and segments. Strava asked the court to halt all sales of infringing Garmin products, which, according to its characterization, would have been, well, most of them.

Strava Chief Product Officer Matt Salazar escalated the fight with an October 2 Reddit post. He said his company’s legal maneuver was in response to Garmin API guidelines that “required the Garmin logo to be present on every single activity post, screen, graph, image, sharing card, etc.” Salazar wrote that Garmin “wants to use Strava and every other partner as an advertising platform — they told us they care more about their marketing than your user experience.”

Those are fighting words, and Strava appeared to be digging in for a righteous and bitter battle against its partner. But now, it’s essentially, “Eh, never mind.”

Why the quick reversal? We reached out to Strava for comment, and we’ll update this post if we hear back. But closed-door discussions between the companies, possibly including threats from Garmin to counter-sue, seem likely. Garmin has a stacked patent library and a strong record defending them in court. Besides, DC Rainmaker says Strava’s case (especially the parts related to heat map patents) didn’t appear to hold much water in the first place.

Strava’s initial move was all the more bizarre, considering how much its business model depends on activity data from Garmin devices. The two companies have a longstanding relationship, which you can imagine isn’t so healthy at the moment. Losing access to Garmin’s legion of devices could have been catastrophic to the San Francisco-based Strava, which plans to file an IPO next year.