By Rachel Cannon
Bikram Choudhury, a celebrity of sorts in the yogic world, is known for being the founder of Bikram yoga, as well as for being an unusually litigious yogi. He has famously filed many suits in the past decade in order to protect a number of his trademarks and copyrights – see page 8 of his most recent complaint for a full description of each. Choudhury is notorious for strictly controlling the Bikram Yoga experience, and for his willingness to take legal action to do so. Few people dispute Choudhury’s right to protect his trademarks against studios that use his name without permission. Of more interest is his copyright for his 26 pose sequence performed in a humid 105-degree room. He has previously sued studios for altering the class structure as he envisions it, including those changing portions of his signature sequence, for adding music to his classes, or for lowering the temperature of the room.
It is not hard to understand why Choudhury would want to control the use of a product that he developed with his own time and effort. However, the primary question has been whether Choudhury’s copyright protections extend as far as he would like them to. While each of Choudhury’s suits represented an opportunity for courts to create some common law on how yoga postures and sequencing should be classified, each of these cases has settled out of court and, therefore, none has produced any precedent.
His most recent suit is against Yoga to the People, an organization based on changing the growing reality that yoga was becoming an activity reserved for the socioeconomically elite group who could afford expensive studio fees. YTTP’s classes are often donation-based and represent a major economic shift in the business of yoga. Gregory Gumucio, a Manhattan yoga instructor for YTTP and a graduate of Bikram’s training, offers a “traditional hot yoga” class for less than half the price of a Bikram studio. Choudhury is suing YTTP and Gumucio for the use of his copyrighted sequence, among other claims.
The validity of this claim has been debated by IP experts. If Bikram Yoga is a system comprised by a unique organization of non-copyrightable content, such a system cannot be registered under Baker v Selden (a U.S. Supreme Court case from 1879 where Baker had tried to copyright a system of bookkeeping). Similarly, if it is classified as a scripted sports play, it also would not be afforded copyright protection, as those are considered to be ideas. Choudhury could have been protected under patent law if he could argue that his method is a functional process. However, this issue is moot, as he has no such patents. As these other claims fail, Choudhury has relied on the argument that his sequencing was more akin to choreography, which has previously been afforded U.S. copyright protection. This core argument supporting his copyright claims has recently been dealt a major blow; the U.S. Copyright Office stated on December 7th that, upon review, they have changed their position so that sequences of yoga exercises are no longer protectable as choreography. This effectively bars Choudhury from making the legal claims he has relied upon for years in order to legally browbeat deviating studios into submission.
To many yogis, this opinion from the U.S. Copyright Office is the beginning of the swan song that effectively ends Bikram’s reign of legal intimidation. While it does not functionally end the litigation (there are still other claims, such as breach of contract, that are not settled – for more on these, see the complaint and defendant’s answer), it does drastically affect the legal power Choudhury has zealously wielded against studios that deviate from his strict standards. He has successfully bullied studios into settlement in part due to his economic power, which allows him to afford litigation expenses, but also because no one knew how a court would come down on the copyright issue. This is a victory for the traditional notion that no one should own the ancient practice of yoga, and perhaps will help tamp down the decidedly un-yogic legal practices in which Choudhury has engaged in the past decade.