ARTICLE
21 March 2013

Are You Infringing Copyright With That Sequence Of Yoga Poses?

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Borden Ladner Gervais LLP

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BLG is a leading, national, full-service Canadian law firm focusing on business law, commercial litigation, and intellectual property solutions for our clients. BLG is one of the country’s largest law firms with more than 750 lawyers, intellectual property agents and other professionals in five cities across Canada.
Breathe easy: the US district court in Los Angeles has decided that the answer is no.
Canada Intellectual Property

Breathe easy: the US district court in Los Angeles has decided that the answer is no. Bikram Choudhury and his yoga college contended otherwise, arguing that copyright in a sequence of 26 poses, performed in a particular order and in a room heated to 105 degrees Fahrenheit, was being violated by Evolation Yoga, an operation run by two former Choudhury employees: Bikram's Yoga College of India LP v Evolation Yoga LLC (Cent D Calif, 14 December 2012). Choudhury had registered copyright in written and audiovisual materials describing the sequence and contended that this extended to the moves themselves. A notion which Wright J rejected, citing the classic decision in Feist Publications Inc v Rural Telephone Service Co, 499 US 340 (1991): Choudhury's copyright protected the expression of the sequence but not the underlying facts of the sequence itself. And anyway, a system of exercises or yoga poses is not copyrightable subject matter under US legislation, not even as a 'pantomime or choreographic work'. The Choudhury sequence was merely a 'procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery' which lay outside the realm of copyright protection. So do your sun salutations with confidence, at least on the IP front.

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