Aus court revokes two F45 fitness tech patents
The Federal Court of Australia has invalidated two patents belonging to fitness company F45 following a four-year legal dispute with rival Body Fit Training (BFT).
On Tuesday, 15 February, Justice John Nicholas dismissed an application from F45 to review a ruling that invalidated two of its patents relating to methods of configuring and operating fitness studios.
F45 alleged that BFT infringed its two patents—Australian Innovation patent number 2015101604 and number 2016101429—with its own computer-outfitted fitness studio configuration.
BFT did not dispute the infringement allegations but claimed that the two patents were invalid and should be revoked. But Justice Nicholas held that even if the patents were valid, BFT did not infringe.
Parallel litigation over these two patents is also underway in the US. A BFT spokesperson told Business News Australia this ruling “did not set a precedent for an ongoing legal case that is before the courts in the US, but may influence the result”.
Manner of manufacture
Justice Nicholas considered the claim language of the ‘604 patent, specifically claim one, which relates to a “computer-implemented method for configuring and operating one or more fitness studios …” and similar wording in claim 5 of the patent.
“Although claim 1 of the 604 patent may be understood as requiring that exercise stations be actually configured in accordance with the studio information program file, the substance of the invention disclosed and claimed resides in the computer-implemented scheme,” the judge said.
As the scheme itself was not inventive, Justice Nicholas ruled that the usage of computer technology was not sufficient enough to make the invention patentable.
Infringement analysis
F45 claimed that BFT’s method of “retrieval and communication” of “timetable information for a particular period”, as well as “individual exercise classes within a particular exercise program” was the core method by which it infringed the two patents.
Justice Nicholas ruled that BFT did not host studio information on a central server accessed by a single computer, rather on an “admin PC” connected to a network of computers and therefore did not infringe on F45’s server-based method.
As a result, the Justice held that BFT’s configuration was “outside” of F45s claim, ordering that the ‘604 and ‘429 patents be revoked and that F45 pay costs related to the proceedings.
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