Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Appeals Court: No You Can't Copyright Yoga
Techdirt: We first wrote about this issue more than a decade ago, but there's been a ridiculous attempt by some yoga instructors to use intellectual property to lock up certain yoga poses. While most of the focus has been on copyright, other attempts have used other forms of intellectual property as well. But the most watched legal dispute was the one brought by Bikram Yoga and Bikram Choudhury against Evolution Yoga... and the 9th Circuit appeals court has now made it abundantly clear: you can't copyright yoga.
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2 comments:
I am constantly amazed by what comes up in the copyright debate. Most of this is ridiculous but there was something that stood out to me. Why is choreography any different? And by no means am I suggesting that yoga should be copyright-able. I am suggesting something much worse. Choreography should not be copyright-able. It is simply a description of movement and if "an idea, process, or system to which copyright protection may in no case extend, what separates choreography. A song is something very real, so are words.
What gives someone the right to say what I can and can't do with my feet?
I think you misread that last statement. I am legitimately asking. Can someone clearly identify how someone telling you how to stand in a park is different than how to stand on stage.
I think the difference here is because Yoga's ultimate purpose, unlike dance or other forms of performing arts that are choreographed, is mental and physical self-improvement. If I'm reading the article correctly (#notalawyer), because the primary purpose of the choreography in dance is entertainment for the audience, its process is its product.
I sometimes keep up with the yoga world, and I'm pretty happy with this decision. Bikram (the dude) particularly is kind of a jerk, and was one of the first people to hyper-monetize and commoditize yoga. My favorite part of this is that Bikram's own hyperbolic marketing about the health benefits of Bikram yoga are a fundamental reason why his copyright claims have been rejected.
I do wonder what all of this means for other class-based, copyrighted fitness classes, such as Pure Barre, Pilates etc. I don't know enough to comment, but I'm wondering if they went about their legal protection in a different fashion, so that they avoided this problem altogether. Or Bikram (the dude) is a fantastic jerk and the copyright office just got extra pissy with him...
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