A celebrity fitness guru sued a former trainer for copying her exercise routines. The Ninth Circuit said they aren’t choreography.
In a 2023 interview with The Wall Street Journal, celebrity fitness guru Tracy Anderson was asked which fitness trend she’d like to see disappear forever. Her answer was characteristically blunt: “Every single person that steals my choreography and calls it a method. I would like for them to all disappear.”
For the uninitiated—which, at $900 a month to sweat in a 95-degree studio, is most of us—Anderson has spent the last two decades building a celebrity fitness empire around something she calls the Tracy Anderson Method.
Her competitors, inconveniently, didn’t disappear. Many of them were former employees. So Anderson sued one of them for copyright infringement.
In Tracy Anderson Mind and Body, LLC v. Roup (read it here), an unpublished memorandum disposition issued last week, the Ninth Circuit held that Anderson’s fitness routines are uncopyrightable methods, not the “choreographic works” she claimed them to be in her lawsuit. The Tracy Anderson Method is a method. And copyright law protects works of expression, not procedures, systems, or methods.
But then, this case was never really about protecting creative expression. It was about a fitness mogul trying to use copyright law as a noncompete clause—and the Ninth Circuit declining the invitation.
The Backstory
Anderson’s brand isn’t just expensive; it’s aspirational. Her studios in Los Angeles, New York, and the Hamptons have attracted clients like Gwyneth Paltrow (who invested in the business), Madonna (who once called Anderson a “savior” before their falling-out), and Jennifer Lopez (who does not appear to need the help). For a certain tier of wellness-conscious clientele, a Tracy Anderson membership isn’t really a gym. It’s a $900-a-month reminder that you’re the kind of person who has a $900-a-month gym membership.
Many of today’s most prominent fitness entrepreneurs once worked for Tracy Anderson: Simone De La Rue (Body By Simone, now the trainer for Taylor Swift), Anna Kaiser (AKT), and Lauren Kleban (Lekfit), among others. Anderson’s response has often been to accuse departing trainers of stealing her movements. As one former employee told Business Insider, receiving legal threats from Anderson had become “almost like a punchline” among fitness professionals.
Megan Roup was the one Anderson decided to drag into federal court. A former Brooklyn Nets dancer, Roup spent six years as a Tracy Anderson trainer before founding The Sculpt Society in 2017—a $20-a-month digital platform that doesn’t care if you exercise with the air conditioning on. In 2022, Anderson sued, alleging Roup infringed copyrights in 19 of her fitness DVDs. Roup called the suit “a frivolous and unprovoked effort to bully a rising competitor.” Anderson also brought contract claims alleging misuse of confidential business information (those later settled), but it was the copyright claim she chose to take to the mat.
Roup didn’t argue the routines were different. She argued they weren’t copyrightable. In a June 2024 ruling, the district court agreed, setting up Anderson’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
The Court’s Ruling
The Ninth Circuit’s analysis rests comfortably on Bikram’s Yoga College of India, L.P. v. Evolation Yoga, LLC, which held that a sequence of yoga poses designed to produce health benefits is an uncopyrightable method under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act—even if arranged with aesthetic considerations in mind.
Anderson’s own words did much of the heavy lifting. Her copyright registrations described the routines as involving “classic dance steps” from “various dance modalities such as ballet, hip-hop, jazz, and modern dance.” Her DVDs promised to “get rid of many typical problem areas” and achieve “optimum calorie burning.” Her Instagram bio described the Tracy Anderson Method as a “researched and results-proven fitness methodology” and a “fitness program designed for strategic muscle design” (which sounds less like choreography and more like a Pentagon line item).
Both the district court and the Ninth Circuit took that branding seriously. The routines were conceived, marketed, and consumed as a fitness system designed to produce physical results. That put them squarely within Section 102(b)’s exclusion for methods and systems.
What About Choreography?
Anderson leaned heavily on Hanagami v. Epic Games, Inc., the Ninth Circuit’s decision clarifying that choreographic works may qualify for copyright protection. As I discussed when that opinion came out, Hanagami rejected the idea that choreography is protectable only as a series of isolated poses; instead, it emphasized that copyright may extend to an original selection and arrangement of movements—including timing, transitions, body positions, and use of space.
In other words: Hanagami tells courts how to analyze choreography once you’re dealing with choreography. It doesn’t expand the category of what counts as choreography in the first place.
That distinction mattered here. The record, the court noted, “lacks any evidence that the audience for these routines perceives them as expressive choreography.” Anderson’s audience wasn’t there for a performance. They were in a heated studio focused on form, repetition, and trying not to pass out.
The court acknowledged that the routines “could fit within some colloquial definitions of dance or choreography.” But their design “primarily reflects function, not expression.” Granting copyright protection would effectively hand Anderson “monopoly rights over functional physical sequences”—meaning no former trainer, and no competitor, could teach anything substantially similar.
The Bottom Line
This wasn’t a particularly close case. Anderson spent years telling everyone who would listen that she’d created a revolutionary fitness method. Her marketing said method. Her registrations said method. Her Instagram bio said method. The court simply took her at her word.
Copyright protects original expression. It doesn’t function as a noncompete agreement. If Anderson wants to restrict what her former employees do after they leave, she has other legal tools—trade secret claims, restrictive covenants, maybe even a strongly worded guest post on Goop. But trying to shoehorn a functional fitness method into the “choreographic works” category was always going to be a stretch, and the court treated it as one.
As always, I’d love to hear what you think. Drop me a note in the comments below or @copyrightlately on social media. In the meantime, here’s a copy of the Ninth Circuit’s memorandum disposition in Tracy Anderson Mind and Body v. Roup. To achieve the full effect, read it with the heat cranked up.
The post Tracy Anderson Called Her Workout a “Method.” The Ninth Circuit Agreed. appeared first on Copyright Lately.