Suunto vs Garmin Lawsuit Gets Really Frisky: Garmin’s Countersuit

Before Strava, there was Suunto. Both in terms of which company started business, but also, more notably, which company sued Garmin first. While Strava suing Garmin back in October got all the headlines, the reality is that Suunto actually sued Garmin nearly two weeks prior, though mostly unnoticed.

Specifically, in September, Suunto and their parent company, Dongguan Liesheng, sued Garmin over 5 different patent infringement allegations, and did so in a court district in Texas known specifically for being fast-moving and generally favoring the company filing the case. This was quite different than the Strava lawsuit in almost every way. The Suunto lawsuit was much more akin to typical patent-troll filing behavior. That was odd for a number of reasons, the most notable being that Suunto and Garmin generally got along just fine, including Suunto licensing numerous things from Garmin during a nearly two-decade-long span. A timeframe that, by all accounts, ended amicably as the two companies (and their ownerships) drifted in different directions.

While Suunto initiated the first salvo back in September, Garmin seemed set on delivering the final 218-page WWF-style salvo back in late December, in a counter-claim of five other patents. As you’ll see, some of the patents in question are incredibly complex, dealing with internal antenna structures. It’s one of the reasons I hadn’t really covered it previously; I prefer to talk about lawsuits I can dive into from a technical standpoint. But Garmin’s response is just too juicy to ignore at this point, the level of sass is something I haven’t seen from Olathe in..well…ever. But also notably, an understanding that this isn’t really the Suunto they know and love driving this, but rather their new parent company’s lawyers.

So, let’s dive into it.

The Initial Patents:

First up, Suunto’s initial suit, filed back in September, centers on five specific patents. As one might expect of any company in this space for decades, Suunto has many patents. In fact, they even have a super nifty website listing all of them (I’d love to see Suunto actually link to the patents for each one, but hey…it’s still a fun list). In any case, the patents are as follows:

Patent 1: 7,489,241: This patent focuses on golf shot tracking, using an accelerometer (detecting the hit of the club against the ball)

Patent 2: 8,021,306: This patent is around determining respiration rate via an optical HR sensor.

Patent 3: 11,018,432: This is about slot mode antennas and antenna design in wearable devices. Slot mode antennas are basically antennas designed to become integrated as part of another object, such as the bezel/etc…and are usually flexible in some capacity.

Patent 4: 7,271,774: This is also about placing antennas in a wrist-worn device.

Patent 5: 10,734,731: This is further about antenna design in a wrist-worn device

As you can see, three out of the five are about antenna design, with one about physiological metrics, and then the last one about golf shot tracking. These are somewhat all over the map, but that’s OK, variety is the spice of life.

In Suunto’s 56-page filing, things are honestly pretty vanilla. While we often see grandiose lawyer fun in filings, including extravagant claims about a company’s importance in the universe, Suunto’s is pretty mellow. The vast majority of the filing is simply listing off the 9,328 different Garmin watch models that encompass these features, as required by the courts to establish which models are allegedly infringing.

At the end of which, it asks the court to order Garmin to stop infringing on said patents, and to get some money in gift cards as a result. It’s not as vocal as Strava’s, which had an assortment of rhetoric and wants. Again, super-duper vanilla.

As I said above, looking at these five patents myself, with 3 out of 5 of them requiring intimate internal knowledge of wire placement, those aren’t ones I could decide one way or another. And the other two, golf-club and respiration rate, are frankly more of a he-said-she-said type thing. So I don’t know who is right or wrong per se, but instead, I can tell you what actually matters here: Size.

Before we go too far though, I do want to point out one thing – which is that this entire post is less about Suunto and their products (or how I view their products), and more about a legal circus. As I’ll get into later on, I think Suunto is making some of the best products they’ve ever made, and some of the most competitive products they’ve ever made. I would *strongly* separate out Suunto’s product/engineering development teams from Dongguan Liesheng’s legal teams. Got it? Good.

Garmin’s Blistering Response:

After Suunto’s filing, things were mostly quiet, as they usually are. The court’s case notes basically are just various legal teams trading confirmations of assignment things, but nothing of note for a few months. That’s normal. Instead, we have to fast forward to a few days after Christmas, on December 29th, when Garmin delivers an astonishing 218-page smack-down.

I can only imagine Garmin’s lawyers went to the company Christmas party some weekend in December, got a bit tipsy, and then proceeded to sit down at 2AM and write their best Suunto smack-down jokes they could. It’s brutal. Just to set the stage for what’s to come, here’s one line from deep in the filing:

“Like everything else, Suunto predictably looked to copy Garmin’s GPS technology as it fell behind in the marketplace.”

Which is a good time to point out that if you’re reading this post in a few years, Garmin’s response may seem a bit strong. But you have to put things in context. This comes at a timeframe where they just got done feeling broadsided by Strava’s lawsuit festival, and then Suunto’s starting in on the action too. From Garmin’s perspective, this starts to look a little bit like the beginning of a trend. Keeping in mind that Garmin themselves haven’t sued any company over patent bits in well over a decade. Their general stance here has been to ignore starting patent battles, but equally, they rarely lose the ones against them (almost never).

So, where do we begin?

Garmin’s document is essentially divided up into about a dozen different ‘defenses’. Some of this stuff is just procedural, but some of it is very real technical talk. However, the very first defense is that Suunto literally sued the wrong company. I’m not kidding. Garmin, of course, has a bunch of corporate entities, and basically, Suunto’s lawyers picked the wrong one.

This won’t likely have any meaningful impact on the case, but it’s a bit of a way to embarrass Suunto’s legal team. Though admittedly, Garmin has almost as many shell companies as they have Instinct models.

So now the document basically goes in a few different directions:

1) They mount defenses against the five patents Suunto says Garmin is infringing
2) They initiate a countersuit against Suunto for five different patents

But more interesting than all that, Garmin starts to separate out Suunto from Dongguan Liesheng. The way they do this is pretty notable, because it’s Garmin saying, “Look, you want this to be about Suunto, but we’re actually going to sue you about every other Dongguan Liesheng device you have in the US”.

However, they give a brief nod on page 2 to the lower-level employees at Suunto first, seemingly saying, “this isn’t about you, we know”:

“Suunto and Garmin cooperated and competed constructively for years. Suunto was a long-time purchaser of Garmin’s wireless and wellness technology. But since Dongguan Liesheng bought Suunto, moved production and design to China, laid off many of Suunto’s employees, and filed this baseless lawsuit, that cooperation has ended.”

And indeed that’s true. Suunto had long licensed technology from Firstbeat, which Garmin acquired years earlier. But also, even before that, Suunto was a big part of ANT+ too (which Garmin owned). Long-time engineers at these two companies know each other on a first-name basis. Heck, upwards of 15 years ago I sat down having nightly beers with them all at the same table.

From there, the games begin. For example, in relation to Dongguan Liesheng’s products, instead of talking about mostly offending Suunto products (which they do later), they include screenshots of offending Dongguan Liesheng products. These are, of course, still mixed in with Suunto ones, but the emphasis here is on pointing out the breach of things.

As we start to get into some of the patents, things get spicy quickly. They point out that Suunto’s ‘306 patent (the one about respiration rate via HR) is actually something Suunto licensed from Garmin starting back in 2003. They then call out a provision (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(f)), which basically states you can’t patent something you learned from someone else. And given that Suunto’s ‘306 patent literally references Garmin’s own patent as prior art, Garmin is doing a bit of a double-take here:

Now, to be clear, you can (and should) absolutely list prior art in your patent application. That in and of itself isn’t an issue (and is part of almost every filing). But Garmin’s defense here is so short and blunt that they seem almost baffled at why they’d have to defend it. Again, I’m not going to try to figure out which side is right here. Because while Garmin lays out a pretty straightforward case, patent battles are rarely straightforward. Still, it seems like Dongguan Liesheng’s lawyers just aren’t familiar with the decades-long intertwined history that Suunto/Garmin/FirstBeat actually have.

After that, Garmin tries to pull an argument that even if Suunto were to succeed on the ‘241 & ‘306 patent, it’d be limited to infringements after 2022, due to assignment of rights from the American sports acquisition. I’m not a lawyer, but this claim seems pretty shaky to me.

In fact, there are a few things that are a bit weird, or simply incorrect. For example, Garmin does a bunch of weird date and company fails here, that almost seems like AI mistakes:

“Suunto is a Finnish brand that sells fitness watches. Suunto launched it’s first GPS product in 2003, some 12 years after Garmin launched it’s first GPS product and also after Garmin’s first fitness watch”.

In reality, Suunto launched its first GPS-integrated watch product in 2003/2004 (Suunto X9), and Garmin launched their first in 2003 (Forerunner 201), but that’s actually all ignoring the fact that Garmin got their dates/companies/etc all mixed up here.

Same goes for this section talking about Connect IQ (during a general grandstanding moment). This is incorrect, because Suunto actually beat Garmin to an App Store, with the Suunto App Zone in 2012 (versus Garmin’s 2014). Suunto later did a different App Store in 2022, but Suunto definitely beat Garmin here on timelines, no matter how you slice it.

And that ignores the comments about Garmin pay and Suunto contactless payments, because the Suunto watch they are referring to here is the Suunto 7, which is really a WearOS watch…and thus, if we want to get really picky here, WearOS actually had contactless payments before Garmin did, in February 2017 versus Garmin’s November 2017. Just sayin’…

So, on to the patents. When it comes to the golf patent, things are relatively straightforward there. First, Garmin says:

“Suunto’s ’774 and ’241 Patents both describe obsolete functionality not used in any Garmin products. It is difficult to have meaningful patents for Suunto as it is consistently behind its competitors, such as Garmin.”

Ouch.

But, nonetheless, they carry on and explain why the ‘241 golf patent wouldn’t apply here anyway:

“Garmin Ltd. denies at least that any of the ’241 Patent Garmin Accused Products “determine[e] a GPS position of the user when the strike event is detected” or “record[] at least the GPS position of the user within a wearable wristop computer after the determination of the GPS position of the user is completed,” as required by the ’241 Patent. GPS functionality in the ’241 Patent Garmin Accused Products operates independently of shot detection.”

Basically, Garmin is saying that the patent itself requires the usage of GPS to trigger a shot event, and then Garmin says that it’s not leveraging GPS for anything to do with the shot. At this point, we have no way to independently validate that code (that’ll come later), but frankly, it kinda makes sense. There’s no reason to use a GPS coordinate when detecting an accelerometer/gyroscope event like a golf swing.

Now, I’m going to skip past the Firstbeat things. Mostly because Garmin’s response here is part-flabbergast at Suunto’s gall, but also part “fine, if you want to play this game, we’re going to play it so much harder”, which is the counter-suit part.

“Even a cursory review of Suunto’s infringement allegations against Garmin shows they are without merit. It is difficult to have meaningful patents as a company that is consistently behind its competitors. Suunto’s ’306 Patent was copied from Firstbeat technology that Suunto once licensed.”

In Garmin’s response, they outline five additional patents that they are countersuing for. Effectively saying, “If you sue us, we’re going to sue you for these five patents”.

Patent 1: 10,271,299: This is focused on GPS antenna design (meant to reply to the ‘432 and ‘731 patents, as it pre-dates those)

Patent 2: 10,276,925: More GPS antenna design

Patent 3: 10,856,794: Firstbeat recovery time and other metrics

Patent 4: 11,318,351: More Firstbeat metrics, indulging training, recovery data

Patent 5: 11,956,874: The Flashlight

So let’s talk about antenna design. Or at least, let’s talk about how much Garmin really wants to talk about antenna design. Holy moly. You can tell some Garmin engineers got really fired up about this one. The amount of work they put into this initial filing illustrates they aren’t playing around.

As part of the filing, they spent about 25 pages alone on photographs, diagrams, x-ray scans, and an assortment of text, illustrating that Garmin believes Suunto straight-up duplicated antenna design from Garmin’s products and patents.

Page after page of illustration, diagram, x-rays, and more:

And more:

Now again, the nuances here matter a ton. But it’s clear that in this section, Garmin made its point.

That’s because shortly after Garmin’s WWF-style response, Suunto filed an update to their lawsuit, basically saying ‘Uhh… never mind’ about the antenna design patent infringement. Both Garmin and Suunto came to an agreement there, and as part of that specific patent (out of five), Suunto has agreed to step back into the bushes,  Homer Simpson style.

So let’s get to the funnest part here: The Flashlight.

The Inspector Gadget Flashlight:

As part of Garmin’s countersuit, they decided to flash Suunto. Or rather, pull out the flashlight patent. As you probably know, the Suunto Vertical 2 includes an LED flashlight. From a hardware standpoint, it’s roughly akin to what we saw Garmin implement starting with the Fenix series in 6X, and then now continuing into numerous other watch lines (Forerunner, Venu, Instinct, etc…).

However, Garmin actually has a patent on that from 2024, though they haven’t selected to practically sue anyone else. For example, back in August, we saw Amazfit introduce it into its T-Rex 3 Pro watch, with a relatively similar design.

In any event, Garmin decided to pull out the flashlight patent on Suunto as part of the countersuit, saying:

“Suunto’s products are typically two or three years behind Garmin’s products. When Garmin launches a feature, such as solar technology, optical heart rate monitoring, mobile payments, and online activity sharing, to name a few, Suunto invariably follows with a copy. As one recent example, Garmin’s fēnix 7X product launched in 2022, and included an integrated flashlight, which was met with universally rave reviews. Three years later, Suunto duplicated Garmin’s work to provide the exact same design as Garmin, resulting in infringement of Garmin’s U.S. Patent No. 11,956,874 (“the ’874 Patent”)”

But this is where things get a bit interesting when it comes to patents. You see, just about any company can apply for a patent on something, and often get it. In the grand scheme of patent life, that’s kinda cheap and easy. But what really matters is defending the patent down the road in a lawsuit (in other words, getting it invalidated).

Having a patent (as Garmin does), scares other companies into not duplicating the feature. It acts as a deterrent, even if it’s on sketchy grounds. That’s because the cost to litigate a patent is so high. So in Garmin’s case, finding a way to get a patent for this has likely limited other companies from duplicating the feature.

The problem is, I’m not really convinced Garmin should have ever had this patent. And the reason is actually simple: Inspector Gadget.

Or rather, more specifically, Penny. Despite common reference to Inspector Gadget, it’s actually his niece who had the smartwatch with a flashlight. This flashlight mode in her smartwatch debuted on September 19th, 1983, in an episode titled “The Boat”, at roughly the 12min 49sec marker, which you can find in full here.

This is actually super important for a number of reasons. In the patent world, things seen on TV and in movies are absolutely considered prior art. If the idea existed prior to a patent, the idea is no longer patentable (at least without adding more conditions). And, to be clear, there may be other watches with flashlights that precede Inspector Gadget. And to be clear, her watch is definitely a smartwatch by even today’s standards. It can stream communications wirelessly, it has a touchscreen, it has TV on it, video streaming, various app-like features, and more.

But there were also real-world watches after that. In the early 2010’s, Victorinox launched Swiss Army Night Vision edition, which included a flashlight in an analog watch.

Beyond these two simple examples, there are countless others in TV and movies. Various James Bond films in the 1960s had flashlights in watches, as did Batman movies later on (including multiple lights), Spy Kids in 2001 also had multi-colored LEDs in smartwatches, and more.

However, again, patents are complex beasts, and Garmin appears to be hanging their hat on a few specific nuances in their patent beyond ‘Flashlight in watch’. 21 claims to be precise. They include all of the following:

– Must have two light-emitting elements (aka two LEDs, as Garmin, Suunto, Amazfit does…Penny is questionable/unclear)
– They must exist in the sidewall of the watch between the 10:00 and 2:00 position (as Garmin, Penny, and Victornox does, as well as Suunto/Amazfit)
– It must be a smartwatch (as Penny, Garmin, Suunto, Amazfit do)
– It must be between 10:00 and 2:00 (as all do)
– It must have a touchscreen (as all the smartwatches do, including Penny)
– It must have a button that can be assigned to operate it (as all smartwatches do, but Penny is unclear in this episode)

From there, it goes into the user interface, and basically boils down to:

– It must have a user-selectable color (as Garmin/Suunto/Amazfit do)
– It must have user-selectable intensity (as Garmin/Suunto/Amazfit do)

In fact, in reading through all 21 claims and subclaims, the singular difference to Inspector Gadget’s implementation is the usage of potentially different colors, as well as potentially two LEDs. Starting off with colors, this would almost certainly fail the ‘obviousness’ test, since countless flashlights allowed for different colors, and in fact, in other Inspector Gadget episodes, he has other wearable devices that have multi-colored flashlights. In Garmin’s claims, each light only emits a single color, not multi-color LEDs

Next is the two-light configuration. Garmin specifically narrowed it down to two lights. Not one, not “at least two”, but precisely two. We don’t know from the animation if that light panel was considered a single light. It looks like it, but that’d be a hard thing to prove. Further, that ignores another three decades of TV and movies with flashlights in smartwatches (same applies to colors).

In fact, reading through this, the hole in the fence here is either using a single mutli-color LED, or using 3 LEDs, or just a single LED of a single color.

(As a side note, Garmin also has a secondary patent around the flashlight, though not mentioned here, which covers the cadence triggering of the light, as Suunto doesn’t leverage such a mode. That patent seems *far* more defendable, as it’s hyper-specific to that feature.)

But I don’t think this really matters. As I said above, the whole point of this patent is to be used as a baseball bat in scenarios just like this. Garmin likely knows this patent isn’t really defensible in a true court battle with a company that has enough money (e.g., Apple, Samsung, Google, etc…). Such a company would easily find other examples in TV or movies to nullify the remaining claims.

Here however, Garmin is able to wield this flashlight just like a sword, as a defensive move. And sure, perhaps some smaller player that doesn’t bother to follow Garmin’s legal patterns might proactively ask for licensing on it, but that’d be a waste. For example, if I were in COROS’s shoes, I’d have no real legal concerns about putting a flashlight in their watches. Garmin simply hasn’t shown any offensive patent posture, and atop that, they’d be unlikely to waste their time trying to use this patent as a sword, when there are countless others they could more efficiently use instead.

Wrap-Up:

As I alluded to at the beginning, I disagree with Garmin about one major thing here. They said that Suunto’s products have deteriorated since the Dongguan Liesheng acquisition. In fact, looking at their products from a consumer and reviewer standpoint, their products have unquestionably gotten better, adding more features, and have become more competitive. Especially in price. That’s factually not debatable. We can, however, have a solid discussion about moving manufacturing to China, shifting most staffing to China, potentially about data privacy, and anything else from that salad bowl. But in terms of the end-state products Suunto is currently making? They are the best and most competitive smartwatches Suunto has ever made. Period.

However, Dongguan Liesheng’s lawsuit via Suunto appears comically misguided and naive. It illustrates an entity (be it a legal team or otherwise) that did little research into how strong a patent position Garmin has relative to Suunto, and more critically, how deep in the hole Suunto would really be when it comes to a patent battle with Garmin. Suunto effectively walked into battle with a purse-sized cache of old, and perhaps non-functional weapons. Whereas Garmin showed up with a few 747s’ worth, brand-new and straight off the factory floor. Whether or not Suunto is right about the four remaining patents is largely irrelevant because Garmin can simply show other Suunto-infringing patents all day long.

This ultimately gets to why most of these companies don’t sue each other: It’s a mutually assured destruction scenario. Virtually all of the tech companies (well beyond health/fitness) are infringing on patents from one another. Many of those patents are probably flimsy at best, but they are issued, and that’s what matters.

My guess is that over the coming weeks (maybe months if they really want to spend money), we’ll see Suunto continue to file updates to the case as they did, probably ultimately giving up entirely. Just my hunch.

With that – thanks for reading!

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