Source: https://www.fr.com/news/feeling-the-burn/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 02:14:59+00:00

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Bikram yoga poses are not copyrightable says the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Copyright owners need to act, says Kristen McCallion and John McCormick.
In 1971 Choudhury Bikram moved to Beverly Hills, California where he quickly became a popular figure in the US yoga industry. Central to Bikram’s popularity was a method of yoga that he calls the sequence. It consists of 26 yoga poses and two breathing exercises always performed in the same order for 90 minutes in a room heated to 105 degrees fahrenheit.
Soon after immigrating to the US, Bikram began teaching yoga in California. In addition to his classes, in 1979 Bikram published Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class, a book that includes descriptions, photographs and drawings of his method. Bikram registered the book with the US Copyright Office that same year. In 1994, he introduced the Bikram Yoga Teaching Course and in 2002 obtained a copyright registration for the compilation of exercises that comprise the sequence.
In 2009, two of Bikram’s former students, both of whom had completed the teaching course, founded Evolation Yoga. Evolation offered a range of yoga classes that included hot yoga, which involved 26 postures and two breathing exercises performed for 90 minutes in a room heated to 105 degrees fahrenheit. Soon after Evolation opened Bikram became aware of its activities and in July 2011 he initiated a lawsuit against Evolation alleging copyright infringement, trademark infringement, false designation of origin, dilution, unfair competition, unfair business practices, breach of contract and inducing breach of contract. Among other things, Bikram asserted that his yoga sequence was a copyrightable choreography protected by Section 102(a) of the US Copyright Act. In the alternative, Bikram argued that his yoga routine was a copyrightable compilation due to his original selection and arrangement of the individual yoga poses that comprise the 90-minute sequence.
Bikram further argued that the copyright registrations issued by the US Copyright Office for his books and videos provided registration protection to the Bikram yoga sequence embodied therein and, consequently, that anyone performing his sequence infringes his registered copyrights.
In 2012 Evolation moved for partial summary judgment against Bikram’s copyright infringement claim. The district court determined that the sequence itself was considered an uncopyrightable fact or idea rather than the creative expression of facts and ideas and declined to recognise that the sequence was protected by copyright, despite Bikram’s copyright registrations.1 Bikram and Evolation eventually settled the remaining claims out of court, but Bikram appealed the district court’s holding that the sequence was not covered by copyright.
On appeal, Bikram maintained his arguments that the sequence was copyrightable. In October 2015, the Court of Appeals affirmed the partial summary judgment in favour of Evolation, finding that the sequence is not a proper subject of copyright.
The Court of Appeals first determined that Bikram’s “sequence is an idea, process or system that is designed to improve health. Copyright protects only the expression of this idea – the words and pictures used to describe the sequence – and not the idea of the sequence itself”.2 Guiding the court was the relationship between Section 102(a) and Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act.
Limiting the scope of Section 102(a) is Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act, which expressly excludes protection for “any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated or embodied”.5 Section 102(b) codifies what is more commonly known as the ‘idea-expression dichotomy’.
Owners or potential owners of copyrights for yoga poses should assume that they will not be able to copyright yoga sequences in and of themselves. While this case applies directly to yoga, its implications extend to all forms of exercise and dance, but its reach does not stop there. The analysis and holding of the case can also apply to any type of process, system or method for doing things. While the way in which the process, system and method is expressed, through a book or video for example, is copyrightable, the underlying process, system or method is not.
The subject of this appeal serves as a reminder that copyright owners should not solely rely on copyright law to protect their IP. Patent and trade dress protection should not be overlooked as viable options. Nor should contract law. Had Bikram protected his interests through contracts, he may have had a more powerful resource to deter and stop his students from teaching the sequence.
Re-evaluate your position as a copyright owner if you already obtained a copyright registration yoga poses, dance routines or exercises. In its statement of policy advising that “a claim in a compilation of exercises or the selection and arrangement of yoga poses will be refused registration” the Copyright Office also advised that it had “issued in error” a number of registration certificates that included “nature of authorship” statements such as “compilations of exercises” or “selection and arrangement of exercises”.
A choreographer who did receive such a registration from the US Copyright Office, who choreographed a work that is more than merely a selection of exercises or movements because it comprises a related series of dance movements and patterns organised into an integrated, coherent and expressive whole, may consider it wise to re-register the work or correct the now invalid registration.
1. Bikram’s Yoga College of India LP et al v Evolation Yoga LLC et al, 2:11-cv-5506, 2012 WL 6548505 (C.D. Cal., 14 Dec, 2012).
2. Bikram’s Yoga College of India, L.P. v. Evolation Yoga, LLC, No. 2:11-cv-05506-ODW-SS at *7 (9th Cir., 8 May, 2015).
3. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a).
4. HR Rep 94-1476 at 53 (1976).
5. 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).
6. Bikram’s Yoga College of India, at *7-15; 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).
7. 101 U.S. 99, 102 (1879); see also Palmer v. Braun, 287 F.3d 1325 (11th Cir. 2002) (holding meditation exercises described in a manual on exploring consciousness not protectable).
8. Bikram’s Yoga College of India, L.P., at *13.
9. 17 U.S.C. § 101.
10. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a).
11. Bikram’s Yoga College of India, L.P., at *22; 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).
12. 77 Fed Reg 37605, 37607 (22 Jun, 2012)(emphasis added).
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This article originally appeared in a special edition of Intellectual Property Magazine December 8, 2015 and is reprinted with permission.

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