If yoga has been around for 5,000 years, can a 21st century businessman claim to own a piece of it? Bikram Choudhury says yes.
The flamboyant Beverly Hills yoga mogul, who popularized his style of yoga and then franchised a chain of studios bearing his name, has long rankled traditionalists, who dislike his tough business tactics and brash outspokenness. Now Choudhury is facing a challenge in a San Francisco courtroom, where a federal judge is hearing arguments in a lawsuit that some legal experts say could define a new frontier in intellectual property. At issue: Can Choudhury take a sequence of two breathing exercises and 26 yoga poses from an ancient Indian practice, copyright it and control how it is practiced?
The legal protection he is allowed may depend on whether yoga is defined as an exercise regimen, a sport, a spiritual practice or a choreographed form of expression, like music or dance. The case, says UCLA law professor Neil Netanel, "really depends on an issue that isn't covered in the law: What is the nature of yoga?"
Some legal experts believe the case could have broader implications, not just for yoga but for many forms of physical exercise.
Stanford University Law School professor Paul Goldstein said a decision in Choudhury's favor would have "clear implications for any other activity that entails a combination of movement and environment," such as choreography or martial arts. "It could also have implications for basketball plays, or football plays, if it were decided that way."
Adds Jim Harrison, a Sacramento attorney representing a group of yoga teachers and students who filed the lawsuit against Choudhury challenging his copyright claims, "If Bikram is successful, people will run to copyright bench-pressing and stepping."
Choudhury's yoga is made up of a sequence of 26 postures (each of which is performed twice during a single class) and two breathing exercises. These postures are culled from 84 classical postures and more than 10,000 combinations.
In Bikram classes, the room is heated to more than 100 degrees, he says, to work bodies like a blacksmith.
Choudhury says his sequence, practiced exactly the way he instructs, has medical, mental and spiritual benefits. He claims it can lower blood pressure and cholesterol, cure arthritis, and heal reproductive and spinal problems.
He also claims to have revived the athletic careers of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and John McEnroe and to have cured former President Richard Nixon of phlebitis.
