A heated room copyrighted yoga sequence and Open Source Yoga

[jee]

By Hilary E. MacGregor, Times Staff Writer

If yoga has been around for 5,000 years, can a 21st century businessman claim to own a piece of it? Bikram Choudhury says yes.

The flamboyant Beverly Hills yoga mogul, who popularized his style of yoga and then franchised a chain of studios bearing his name, has long rankled traditionalists, who dislike his tough business tactics and brash outspokenness. Now Choudhury is facing a challenge in a San Francisco courtroom, where a federal judge is hearing arguments in a lawsuit that some legal experts say could define a new frontier in intellectual property. At issue: Can Choudhury take a sequence of two breathing exercises and 26 yoga poses from an ancient Indian practice, copyright it and control how it is practiced?

Some legal experts believe the case could have broader implications, not just for yoga but for many forms of physical exercise.

Adds Jim Harrison, "If Bikram is successful, people will run to copyright bench-pressing and stepping."

Choudhury's yoga is made up of a sequence of 26 postures (each of which is performed twice during a single class) and two breathing exercises. These postures are culled from 84 classical postures and more than 10,000 combinations.

In Bikram classes, the room is heated to more than 100 degrees, he says, to work bodies like a blacksmith. There are currently more than 1,300 Bikram Yoga studios around the world. Choudhury doesn't like it when others mess with his system.

"My system works, as long as people let me do my job my way," he said. "It is not just the sequence, it is how you do it: the timing, the mirrors, the temperature, the carpet. But if people only do it 99% right, it is 100% wrong. When someone tries to mess with it, the people won't get the yoga benefits. Then it is just calisthenic exercise, like running, jogging or swimming."

Choudhury has tried various legal maneuvers to protect what he considers his intellectual property. For example, teachers at his franchised studios are supposed to follow an approved text, or "dialogue," that he has copyrighted. He has also copyrighted the name of his studios (Bikram's College of India) and the name of his yoga program (Bikram Yoga).

After he sued an Orange County yoga studio for copyright and trademark infringement in 2002, a small group of yogis went on the counterattack. Taking a page from the "open source" movement in the computer software world, they called themselves "Open Source Yoga Unity."

The group is headed by Vanessa Calder, 28, a yoga teacher who learned the 26-pose Bikram sequence from her parents without getting formal certification. (Her parents, who own four Yoga Loka studios in Northern California, received one of Choudhury's cease-and-desist letters in 2002.)

Open Source Yoga has about two dozen members, mostly teachers or students of Bikram and other styles of yoga. Most choose to remain anonymous because they are afraid that Choudhury may sue them if their identities are known, said Calder, the group's chief executive.

In July 2003, Open Source filed a suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, asking the judge to declare that Bikram could not use his copyrights to stop others from practicing or teaching classes that used the Bikram sequence of poses.

At a hearing in January, the attorneys finally stood before Judge Phyllis Hamilton and argued the main issue in the case: What is the scope of Choudhury's copyright protection?

On one side of the courtroom sat Choudhury, self-proclaimed yogi to the stars, in pinstriped suit, a diamond-studded watch on his wrist, a pink silk handkerchief peeking out of his breast pocket. On the other side, dressed in a flowing Indian print skirt, sat Calder, surrounded by several supportive yoga students and teachers.

As the lawyers for both sides argued their cases, Hamilton struggled with Indian names and yogic concepts, and with what exactly was at stake. "This is a very unusual case," Hamilton began. "I don't even know what is being sought. Am I pronouncing this correctly? Bikram?"

Copyright law does not extend to an idea or process; it only addresses the way an idea is actually expressed. That means a book, video or photograph can be copyrighted, but teaching a recipe written in a cookbook, for example, could not.

Athletic movements, such as a basketball star's signature slam-dunk, cannot be copyrighted because sports games are unscripted and have unanticipated occurrences.

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[Anakha56]

hehe i think the poor lawyers are going to have to bend over backwards to sort this problem out