F45 sued a rival over its workout-tech patent — the court revoked the patent instead

F45, the Australian franchised-gym empire with more than 1,750 studios in 45 countries, celebrity backers including Mark Wahlberg, Greg Norman and Cindy Crawford, and a 2021 Wall Street debut at a $2 billion valuation, ran on a computer network that disseminates workout routines from a central server to screens in every studio.

It sued Melbourne rival Body Fit Training in the Federal Court, claiming BFT infringed its patent by also configuring its studios from a central server. In February 2022 Justice John Nicholas ruled BFT had not infringed — and went further: F45's patent was invalid and should be revoked. A business scheme, he said, is not patentable 'merely because it is implemented using generic computing technology'; it is 'the kind of scheme that has, historically, never been regarded as patentable subject matter.'

F45 was also ordered to pay Body Fit Training's costs. BFT's co-CEOs Cameron Falloon and Richard Burnet had framed the suit as F45 asserting 'invalid patents' to hinder 'what we believe to be a superior business model.' UNSW intellectual-property expert Kayleen Manwaring said the ruling could make Australian authorities more likely to knock back similar computer-implemented business-scheme patents.

Its patent revoked as invalid, Body Fit's court costs to pay, and a precedent weighing against similar Australian tech patents.

F45's core system was a business scheme implemented with generic computing technology, which Australian courts have historically not treated as patentable subject matter.

Bringing the suit put its own patent in issue, and the court responded by revoking it outright rather than leaving it standing.

Losing meant paying the smaller rival's costs while BFT's rapid rise — with franchises bought by Test cricketers and AFL stars — gained free publicity.

A business process running on generic computing technology is not a patentable moat; litigating to protect one can end in destroying the claim itself.

F45 still had a similar patent case before the US courts at the time, where Manwaring noted different principles apply, so the American suit was not necessarily doomed. In Australia, though, the ruling was expected to make it harder to get similar technological patents approved, with the patent office closely examining the case.