Justice John Nicholas of the Federal Court of Australia this week agreed the business scheme was not patentable “merely because it is implemented using generic computing technology”.
Justice Nicholas ruled F45’s patent was invalid and should be revoked.
F45, which was founded in 2013 and now has more than 1750 franchises across 45 countries, has a similar patent case before the courts in the United States.
The gym chain’s lawyers had argued that Body Fit Training had copied F45’s program by broadcasting workouts to the fitness studios from a central server.
After receiving an initial legal notice from F45 in 2017, Mr Fallon said he invited executives from the rival to view his studios, which they did.
He said it was two years before he received another “aggressive” letter demanding he stop using his method of workout delivery.
“It all kicked off again in 2019, and it’s been very demanding from a time and cost perspective,” Mr Falloon said.
F45, which is backed by actor Mark Wahlberg, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in July last year. It has a market capitalisation of $US1.38 billion ($1.93 billion).
Body Fit Training delivers workouts similar to those used by high-performance athletes, and last year banked a $60 million investment from US-based Xponential Fitness.
“We’ve spent a helluva lot of time and money on this, and now we can get back to growing our business,” Mr Falloon said.
The court has ordered F45 to pay Body Fit Training’s legal costs.
