Bikram Choudhury Bikram Choudhury (born 1944) is an Indian-born American yoga guru, and the founder of Bikram Yoga, a form of hot yoga consisting of a fixed series of 26 postures practised in a hot environment of . The business became a success in the United St ...

made a series of claims that his

yoga Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciou ...

practice,

Bikram Yoga Bikram Yoga is a system of hot yoga, a type of yoga as exercise, devised by Bikram Choudhury and based on the teachings of B. C. Ghosh, that became popular in the early 1970s. Classes consist of a fixed sequence of 26 postures, practised in a ...

, was under

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

and that it could not be taught or presented by anyone whom he had not authorized, starting in 2002. In 2011 Choudhury started a lawsuit against

Yoga to the People Yoga to the People was a chain of United States-based yoga studios that offered free or donation-funded modern yoga classes to any kind of student, including casual practitioners. Services Yoga to the People had a business model that tried to provi ...

, a competing yoga studio founded by a former student of Bikram's and with a location near one of the Bikram Yoga studios in New York. As a result of that lawsuit, the

United States Copyright Office The United States Copyright Office (USCO), a part of the Library of Congress, is a United States government body that maintains records of copyright registration, including a copyright catalog. It is used by copyright title searchers who are ...

issued a clarification that yoga postures (''

asanas An asana is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose,Verse 46, chapter II, "Patanjali Yoga sutras" by Swami Prabhavananda, published by the Sri Ramakrishna Math p. 111 and later extended in hatha yoga ...

'') could not be copyrighted in the way claimed by Bikram, and that Yoga to the People and others could continue to freely teach these exercises. In 2015, the

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District o ...

affirmed a lower court ruling that the Bikram Yoga Sequence was not copyrightable subject matter.

Background

Bikram Choudhury goes by his first name, "Bikram". He is most known in popular culture for

mass marketing Mass marketing is a marketing strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and appeal the whole market with one offer or one strategy, which supports the idea of broadcasting a message that will reach the largest number o ...

his

practice into a

franchising Franchising is based on a marketing concept which can be adopted by an organization as a strategy for business expansion. Where implemented, a franchisor licenses some or all of its know-how, procedures, intellectual property, use of its busine ...

system of 900 yoga studios as of 2004. He insists that classes be taught in these studios in a certain way, and that they taught a series of 26 yoga postures. Starting in 2002, he began having his lawyers send out

cease and desist A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not dis ...

letters to any yoga studio which presented his Bikram Yoga sequences without his authorization. In the United States, Choudhury has claimed, and been aggressive in threatening suit over, broad copyrights in most aspects of the practice, teaching, and business of the system. He extracted settlements from a number of yoga teachers and studios. However, in 2012, the US Copyright Office concluded that copyright for Bikram's sequence of 26 postures had been issued in error. This led a federal district court, and later the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, to reject Choudhury's claims and rule that the sequence of postures was not copyrightable.

Bikram Yoga versus Yoga to the People

Yoga to the People was a yoga studio established by one of

's former work associates. It aimed to make yoga available to all, regardless of ability to pay. After Yoga to the People opened a yoga studio near a

studio, Bikram started a lawsuit to have them cease presenting Bikram Yoga sequences at their studio. As a result of that lawsuit, the

issued a clarification that yoga postures (''

'') could not be copyrighted in the way claimed by Bikram, and that Yoga to the People and others could continue to freely teach these exercises. After that clarification Yoga to the People and Bikram came to an agreement that Yoga to the People would not present Bikram Yoga. Despite not having a court-ordered obligation to do so, Yoga to the People ceased to present Bikram Yoga sequences in its studios and instead began using its own sequences. Of the settlement, Bikram said ""I win, he lose, and that's it... Nobody will ever be able to steal Bikram yoga anymore."

Bikram's Yoga College v. Evolation Yoga

Evolation Yoga was founded by a previous associate of

. Choudhury similarly sued Evolation Yoga for teaching hot yoga with the same sequence of postures as Bikram Yoga. On December 17, 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Otis Wright ruled that Bikram Choudhury does not have copyright protection for the sequence of 26 yoga postures and two breathing exercises commonly known as “Bikram Yoga.” The ruling, in favor of Evolation Yoga LLC and its founders Mark Drost and Zefea Samson, meant that non-Bikram studios are allowed to offer hot yoga classes utilizing that same 26-posture sequence—a legal right Choudhury actively and vigorously contested for several years. On October 8, 2015, the

affirmed, finding that the sequence of yoga postures was not copyrightable subject matter under 17 U.S.C. § 102(b) and that Choudhury's copyright in a book describing his system did not give him copyright over the sequence itself.

References

{{reflist

External links

open letter from Yoga to the People
at the conclusion of the legal debate
clarification about yoga posture copyright
from the ''

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