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Strava sues Garmin over alleged patent infringement (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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DCRainmaker video that does a pretty good job also explaining what's going on and company history behind the features and patents being disputed

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[–] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

FFS. How are these ideas remotely patentable in the first place? Software patents are pure dogshit.

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Heatmaps I have no clue, and hilariously enough, Garmin had heatmaps before Strava.

    The segments one actually has some innovative ideas when I read the claims, but they filed for it multiple years after they offered it to the public so I have no clue how they got that patent either.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah, software patents in the US especially, have become a way for companies to either kill competition, or make buying up ridiculous patents and suing for infringement their primary source of income.

    Primary issue is the patent office has few officers that are technical enough to understand the overlap of the specific industry and software. So, they tend to just allow anything, especially from larger companies that they're told to assume have the expertise if they don't since their load is too large to have time to learn new stuff and truly research if something is obvious or not.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah, although in this case, I'm not really sure what Strava expects to have happen. Garmin is orders of magnitude larger than them and hasn't lost a patent lawsuit in like 15 years. The most likely outcome I see of this is that Strava goes from 26 patents to 24 patents.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Probably just to try to make Garmin's product less useful in the short term while the case drags out. Or as a way to get Garmin to acquire them. Strava basically seems to have bought up some competitors that were failing and they have been on the way downhill. So at this stage usually these companies start cost cutting and using any means necessary to increase their perceived value for sale. This gives Garmin an incentive to buy them as that would end the lawsuit and they'd then acquire some additional defensive patents.

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    • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Polar superiority rise up!

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    2 comments in c/legalnews@lemmy.zip view that post
    [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    How could they possibly get a patent on "segements"? Websites like fastestknowntime have existed since way before strava.

    I started reading the patent, but pretty quickly got bored. It also seems to me like garmin has many patents predating this one that would enable them to display this data.

    Also, this is really strava biting the hand that feeds.

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