No Copyright in Cardio: Ninth Circuit Rejects Protection for Tracy Anderson Exercise Routines
Can a workout method be protected as choreography under federal copyright law? The Ninth Circuit recently said no.
Without breaking too much of a sweat, the Ninth Circuit, in a trim five-page order, affirmed summary judgment in favor of defendants, celebrity trainer Megan Roup (“Roup”) and her fitness platform, The Sculpt Society (“TSS”), on a copyright infringement claim brought by Tracy Anderson Mind and Body, LLC (“TAMB”), holding that the exercise routines at issue are not protectable works. (Tracy Anderson Mind and Body, LLC v. Roup, No. 24-6936 (9th Cir. Feb. 17, 2026) (unpublished)). The decision reinforces a boundary the Ninth Circuit first articulated a decade ago in the Bikram’s Yoga opinion. In that case, the appeals court confirmed that fitness sequences themselves are generally uncopyrightable methods, processes, or systems that primarily reflect function, not expression (even if the distributed product, such as a branded book or exercise video, could itself be copyrightable). (Bikram's Yoga College of India, L.P. v. Evolation Yoga, LLC, 803 F.3d 1032 (9th Cir. 2015)).
TAMB is the parent company to numerous exercise studio entities, and was founded by Tracy Anderson, a fitness entrepreneur who developed the “TA Method,” a set of routines combining choreography, fitness, and cardiovascular movement. After working for TAMB for six years, Roup left and developed TSS based on her own cardio workout and fitness philosophy. In July 2022, plaintiff TAMB got off the mat and filed suit in the Central District of California against its former trainer, Roup, and her fitness company, TSS (collectively, the “Defendants”), alleging, among other claims, that Roup’s rival fitness platform copied choreography, movements, and sequences from TAMB’s TA Method. TAMB sought damages and injunctive relief.
TAMB’s copyright infringement claim centered on allegations that TSS’s workout videos copied TAMB’s nineteen registered workout videos (“TA Works DVDs”), which feature a selection and arrangement of dance-based cardio and sculpt movements from the TA Method. TAMB characterized these routines as original choreographic works entitled to copyright protection. While TSS did not dispute the general similarity between TAMB’s and TSS’s exercise dance routines, it focused on the threshold issue, arguing that TAMB cannot prove its copyright claim because the underlying exercises in the TA Works DVDs are not copyrightable.
Thus, the central issue in this case was whether the TA Method routines qualified as protectable choreographic “expression,” or whether they were instead uncopyrightable “procedures,” “processes,” or “systems” under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act. Section 102(b) codifies the “idea/expression dichotomy” and provides that copyright protection does not extend to “any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.”
The parties were not debating whether the TA Works DVDs may be protectable as audiovisual works or whether the Defendants copied the DVDs themselves; rather, the question was whether the underlying sequence of movements embodied in those recordings could be protected.
This idea/expression distinction proved to be dispositive. In June 2024, the district court granted summary judgment to Defendants on the copyright infringement claim, and after a rest interval, in mid-February, the Ninth Circuit affirmed.
The case turned on the threshold question of copyrightability. Neither court considered substantial similarity or engaged in a detailed comparison of the parties’ routines. Instead, the courts asked whether the TA Method routines were protectable subject matter in the first instance. Both the lower court and appeals court answered this question in the negative, ending the copyright claim as a matter of law.
The district court concluded that the TA Method routines functioned as a system or method of exercise. The court explained that TAMB is a company operating in the wellness industry, “revealing that its purpose is not art or expression, but health and fitness.” The record further reflected that the TA Method was marketed as a “method” – a proprietary fitness system engineered to produce specific physiological outcomes. The court found that the sequencing of movements was tied to utilitarian fitness goals and that even if the sequences produced spiritual or psychological benefits, it is “no less an idea, system, or process and no more amenable to copyright protection.”
The court also considered consumer perception, stating that the TA Works DVDs were consumed as instructional fitness content. As the court noted, users performed the routines to achieve physical results, not to experience them as expressive dance performances (“Plaintiffs provide no evidence that anyone perceives or understands the TA Method to be a performance art or anything other than an exercise routine”). Although the movements drew from classical ballet, jazz, and contemporary dance vocabulary, the court found that the routines were presented as repeatable exercise regimens (“Even if there is choreography, if the TA Method is a method, process, or system, it cannot be copyrightable.”)
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed that the functional character of the routines was dispositive. The panel relied heavily on its 2015 decision in Bikram’s Yoga College of India, L.P. v. Evolation Yoga, LLC, which addressed whether a fixed sequence of twenty-six yoga poses and two breathing exercises could be copyrighted.
In Bikram’s Yoga, the court held that the yoga sequence at issue was an uncopyrightable system designed to improve health. While a book describing the sequence could be protected as expression, the sequence itself could not. The court explained that extending copyright protection would effectively grant exclusive rights over a method of exercise.
Here, the Ninth Circuit treated the routines in the TA Works DVDs as analogous to the yoga asanas in Bikram’s Yoga. Both involved structured series of physical movements, marketed as proprietary regimens and “arranged for their ‘health and fitness benefits.’” The Ninth Circuit stated that the design of the routines “primarily reflects function, not expression” and highlighted that “the record also lacks any evidence that the audience for these routines perceives them as expressive choreography.”
Underlying the panel’s reasoning was a structural concern. The court reasoned that extending copyright protection to “functional physical sequences” would extend copyright protection “beyond its constitutional [and statutory] limits.”
Taking a high-level view, the Ninth Circuit’s decision does not foreclose copyright protection for choreography more broadly. Citing a decision covered in a prior edition of this newsletter, the court clarified that choreography may be protectable based on the original selection and arrangement of movements and other elements.
However, by reaffirming Bikram’s Yoga, the Ninth Circuit drew a line: exercise regimens like the TA Method or a sequence of yoga poses, when designed and marketed to improve health, are unprotectable methods. For fitness platforms and content creators, the decision reinforces several points:
- Copyright protection may extend to the audiovisual recording of a workout sequence, but not necessarily to the underlying exercise system.
- Courts may examine purpose, structure and market presentation in classifying the copyrightability of a work under the idea/expression dichotomy.
- Efforts to protect proprietary fitness methodologies are more likely to succeed through contract, trade secret and brand-based strategies than through copyright claims.