" First he got them hot. Then he got them bothered. Then he got sued.

Bikram Choudhury, the Beverly Hills yoga master to the lithe and sweaty masses, swept into San Francisco on Wednesday for mediation of an intellectual property lawsuit that has more twists and turns than his 26 postures, done twice each in a room heated to over 105 degrees.

Choudhury, America's best known and most controversial yogi, opened one of his first yoga schools in San Francisco in 1973 and now boasts 900 studios worldwide. He copyrighted, trademarked and franchised his poses, breathing techniques and dialogue, creating the first chain of its kind.

He also hired lawyers who set loose a flurry of cease-and-desist letters warning yoga teachers in the Bay Area and beyond not to teach his yoga or anything "derivative" if they haven't graduated from his $5,000-per-person training program and are not paying a studio franchise fee. His letters threaten a penalty of $150,000 per infringement.

Now, a San Francisco nonprofit organization of yoga enthusiasts from San Rafael to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., is countering with a federal lawsuit attacking the guru's claim that yoga is proprietary. They say that yoga is a 5,000-year- old tradition that cannot be owned. The suit is asking the judge to determine whether Choudhury is entitled to copyright and trademark his material under federal copyright laws. A trial date has been set for next February.

"We're not disputing that Mr. Choudhury did something creative and useful in putting the postures together in a certain order,'' said Elizabeth Rader, a copyright attorney representing the nonprofit Open Source Yoga Unity. She says Choudhury took the 26 postures from 84 classical ones that have been taught in India for centuries.

"Our belief is that you can't treat the poses as private property. We want this clarified. Right now, people out there are trying to teach yoga, and they're not sure what's going to get them sued.''

Choudhury doesn't stop with cease-and-desist letters. In July, he won a copyright infringement suit against the owners of a Southern California yoga studio. Under the settlement, the operators agreed to pay Choudhury an undisclosed sum and never again teach Bikram-style yoga.

Choudhury, a former yoga champion in his native India who came to America, befriended celebrities, built a global franchise and made millions, said during a break from mediation that he is protecting his "lifetime investment."

"Anything you teach you have to learn to do,'' Choudhury said. "Someone can't teach if they haven't learned the right way. If you want to fly, you go to flying school. A lot of people are trying to teach my yoga from my book. That's not possible.''

Speaking in a lilting accent, Choudhury said he has copyrighted the sequence, not the postures. He arranged the poses in a certain way, matched each pose to a precise dialogue used by the instructor and set the 90 minutes of exercises in a mirrored, carpeted room heated like a sauna. That, he says, is his intellectual property. "

There's a lot more in the article...please read the rest at:

www.sfgate.com/
---------------SNIP--------------------------------------------
This, to me is just NUTS. It's like a church saying that they
can copyright a bible, if they just rearrange the books, say,
starting with Leviticus instead of Genesis. Yoga is often said
to be a spiritual exercise..the word "Yoga" means yoke, as in
a union with the Supreme Energy....this is just horrible!

from the story referenced...
"To some yoga traditionalists, efforts to sell, market and patent good karma is anathema to yoga's teachings of selfless devotion to others."

h

This is stupid. Someone better hurry up and start copyrighting sex while they are at it.

What the Fuck is wrong with people. Yoga Kicks Ass and it should'nt be argued about. It's all about who did what or what did who. So Just keep in mind that this whole thing is Assinine!

What the Fuck is wrong with people. Yoga Kicks Ass and it should'nt be argued about. It's all about who did what or what did who. So Just keep in mind that this whole thing is Assinine!

"In July, he won a copyright infringement suit against the owners of a Southern California yoga studio. Under the settlement, the operators agreed to pay Choudhury an undisclosed sum and never again teach Bikram-style yoga."

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah....never again teach Bikram-style yoga.....lolololololololololol....LMAO, ROFL........

WTF? This is hilarious. A memory passes in front of me right now of an MTV video where a rebel kid was in a futuristic world where "Dancing Illegal" sign posts where everywhere. He started danginc and ppl looked at him as if he just killed somebody.

THIS IS ONE MORE REASON WHY WHE NEED TO KILL COPYRIGHT RIGHT NOW WHEN WE STILL CAN,(berfore someone copyrights sex )

We need to find an alternative way to reward artists for their work, copyright is OBSOLETE.

*dancing

You guys have said it all. This is very definitey NUTS!

Next thing you know, they'll be putting copyrights on dance and martial arts.

actually, that's ALREADY been done voltz15...

I've been involved in martial arts for 30 years.
Certain individuals in the martial arts have gone heavily into
trademarking and copyrighting of styles and names...for example,
there is Leung Ting who uses the term, Ving Tsun, where most people call it Wing Chun, and he has created franchises on teaching Ving Tsun, similar things are done with the Bruce Lee system of Jun Fan,
and Jeet Kune Do.
~Code

Thats it, Im going to copyright the stench of my farts. Anybody who releases a similar or same stench will be sued for $150,000 in damages...

The above statement is just as equally retarted as the copyrighted yoga moves. People are using copyright for one thing now:

To milk money out of others who share the same common intrests.

oh shit now if you can't move your own body in certain positions because the positions are copyrighted.

How long before someone copyrights masturbation techniques?

On my way to rearrange the Kama Sutra positions and copyright it.

Anyone interested in a franchise deal!

You can't copyright poses. Only a particular fixation describing/depicting such poses. Sorry. If the crazy ninth circuit says you can, they WILL be reversed. Martial arts is a METHOD. Not a creative expression. Methods are patented, expression is copyrighted. F*** the ninth circuit.

Ahh, masturbation techniques, good idea, the Kama Byouselfa.

I'm there!!!

Guess I better copyright things like walking and eating and then sue people for $150,000 a piece. Then maybe they'll change things. Then I'll copyright my thought processes.

JByron, good observation.

Most of the more franchise minded/business minded martial artists and schools, really get into protection of their methods, names, etc. through the office of Patents and Trademarks, and copyrighting all their photos, writings, etc.

If someone goes out and puts up a sign saying they are teaching Jeet Kune Do, and Danny Inosanto finds out, you may get a call from his lawyer.

Same thing with Leung Ting, who is in Hong Kong (or was last time I recall)...if you start calling your school "VingTsun" and not "Wing Chun", Ting finds out, he may have his lawyers contact you.

There are others...

check out this DMCA notice
http://www.dragonmoon.org/copyright.html

"This, to me is just NUTS. It's like a church saying that they
can copyright a bible"

The Bible is copyrighted and yes the person(s) that owns the copyright have prevented people, like the Mormon Church for example, from printing their own version or allow them to officially change it. Keep in mind that the Bible has been translated over 300,000 times.... that is a lot of versions and they won’t let certain people have their own versions. Sounds like discrimination to me.

or maybe it was each version has their own copyright.... I can not remember now.

Lets just elliminate market competition all together....

http://members.aol.com/pilgrimpub/kjvcopy.htm
"The most bizarre reason for rejecting the New American Standard Bible, the New International Version, or the New King James Version is that these — and apparently all other major versions since 1881 — were copyrighted. The argument is that the publishers, by copyrighting their new Bibles, insure themselves a hefty royalty from every copy sold, and in fact made the new translations with the sinister motive of making a profit on the gullibility of religious people who buy every new Bible that comes along. The KJV, in contrast, is characterized as being far superior to any other version because it is "the only Bible published without a copyright!" as one recent publication stated. God just won't use a copyrighted Bible, some insist. "
"...I confirmed this with my own eyes in November, 1976, at the library of the University of Chicago which has a 1st edition KJV in its collection; the Oxford University Press in 1911 produced "an exact reprint in Roman type, page for page of the Authorized Version published in the year 1611." It naturally has precisely the same words on the New Testament title page. [It was this Oxford 1911 reprint which was re-issued by Thomas Nelson Publishers in the late 1980's.] A personal inspection of the 2nd edition of the KJV (1613), in the collection of the Vick Memorial Library at Baptist Bible College, Springfield, Missouri, reveals the words "Cum Privilegio" on both the title page to the whole Bible and the title page to the New Testament. No doubt later editions read the same or similarly.

This copyright on the King James Version merely brought it into the mainstream with numerous earlier English versions which were also copyrighted. William F. Moulton, in his singularly superb volume The History of the English Bible (5th edition, 1911), informs the reader that in 1537, a second and a third edition of Coverdale's Bible was published by Nycolson, of Southwark [a section of London] — and here we at last read at the foot of the title-page, "Set forth with the Kynges most gracious license" (pg. 99).

Then, after noting that "In 1539 Taverner published his edition of the Bible," Moulton quotes the title page of that edition which reads in part, "Printed at London in Flete street at the synge of the sonne by John Byddell, for Thomas Barthlet. Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum. M.D.XXXIX." (pg. 133). " Ibid.

There are differnt "bibles" in that, they are different compilations...the Catholic bible has some books the Protestant one does not...The Council of Trent (1545-1564) became a sorting through to decide what would be included and what would not...
http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/trent.htm
"Also, the Council held the belief that only the traditional Catholic Bible, called the Vulgate, was right and official, and thus, they rejected all other versions."

Ok, copywriting Yoga is dumb, I'll get back to that in a bit...

Copywriting martial arts is a legally dumb thing, but a traditional practice. Most martial arts were a teacher-student relationship not unlike a master-apprentice deal. You just *didn't* go out and blab your lesson to anyone, because the master owned you for your indenture. You didn't go out and teach what your sensei taught because he'd put tha beat down on you.

Yoga, however, is a much more "public domain" practice. Yoga exists for the physical and spiritual harmony of all mankind. To say "You can't use that Sun Salutation" or "You aren't allowed to use those asanas" is basically to say "I don't want you to be enlightened." It would be kind of like what the church of Scientology does, which is to copywrite and make secret an entire "spiritual" movement.

Nobody should have to pay Bikram for anything other than physical materials he created to describe the asanas or his arangement of such. If Bikram makes a DVD, book, tape, CD, movie, yes, he deserves money because those are intellectual properties. The sequences themselves cannot be copywrited.(copywritten?)

Re: Bibles.

It is the *translation* that is copyrighted because discretion and judgment is used in the translation.

Not an endorsement, but FYI, here are two public domain versions you can use for anything you want to:

http://www.ebible.org/bible/kjv/
http://www.ebible.org/bible/asv/

Nope i think its great that they sue...its really showing to\he public and everyone how much copyright laws need reform.

Everytime someone gets sued over something stupid..its shows how stupid this is getting.

Sooner or later the smart assed lil bastards who thot they were doing something smart with all their little copyright bitching, DRM and DCMA..somehow I just know very well...that they will soon find out that their own greed and dumbassed thinking is gonna come right back around and them on their own asses.

I can just see somehow that they've fucked themselves up somehow...evetually this little demon is going to turn on even them.

I'm copyrighting the thought process. I'm charging a literal "penny for your thoughts". I should be rich sometime tomorrow. I think. Oh, crap, lost a penny! Gotta pay myself.

JByron- Thanks for the links..cool!
Much appreciated.

Our society is in such a mess...lol. Nation against nation..brother against brother. People suing each other over more stupid things now than ever.

Even if there were no wars to fight..we'd still be at each others throats trying to somehow planning how we could get our neighbour's money into our own bank accounts.

Ya know I believe that God is watching us for sure...just as the song says...but laughing at our calamity...just as it said He would.

This ability to sue for whatever reasons you can come up with has thrown us a greed bone that has turned our society into beings that will eventually destroy each other.

OK, everyone has avoided posting this pun so, here goes.
Isn't this suit a stretch?

Thanks Code and JBryon!

Jefry you may own "penny for your thoughts" but if you do and use it, you owe me my "two cents worth".

Ouch! Just getting started and I'm already in the hole!

You can't copyright a fart, but you probably could patent it.