{"id":1057,"date":"2012-10-07T15:58:07","date_gmt":"2012-10-07T15:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=1057"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:06","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:06","slug":"no-copyrighting-yoga-poses-football-games-or-acupuncture-procedures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/no-copyrighting-yoga-poses-football-games-or-acupuncture-procedures\/","title":{"rendered":"No Copyrighting Yoga Poses, Football Games, or Acupuncture Procedures?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday, October 5, 2012, by Seiko Okada
\nAn exercise or a posture is not copyrightable under the Copyright Act<\/a>.\u00a0 Whether specific sequences of movements are copyrightable has not, however, been entirely clear. The Copyright Office now has taken an official stance in an effort to resolve that question.
\nBikram Choudhury<\/a>, the founder of Bikram Yoga, claimed a copyright to his \u201ccompilation\u201d of yoga poses and exercises, and sued other yogis for copyright infringement.\u00a0 Traditional yogis objected<\/a>, saying that yoga is a thousands-of-year old health technique that has been designed and taught as an open source material. \u00a0Bikram\u2019s rivals created non-profit Open Source Yoga Unity<\/a>, and sued Bikram back. \u201cOn first impression, it thus seems inappropriate, and almost unbelievable, that a sequence of yoga positions could be any one person’s intellectual property,\u201d the trial court said<\/a>. However, the court found that compilations of yoga movements may be copyrightable<\/a>.\u00a0 The case was subsequently settled and did not go further.
\nTo clarify the issue, the Copyright Office recently issued a policy statement<\/a>: \u00a0Authorship claims for compilations that do not result in Congressionally-established copyrightable subject matter will be refused.\u00a0 That would include a compilation of physical movements, or health promoting processes, like yoga.<\/p>\n

Authorship claims for compilations that do not result in congressionally-established copyrightable subject matter will be refused\u2014including compilation of ideas, procedures, or functional physical movements.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A \u201ccompilation<\/a>\u201d means an assembly of preexisting materials \u201cthat are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.\u201d\u00a0 Individually uncopyrightable elements can be compiled into a copyrightable whole.\u00a0 The Copyright Office analyzed legislative history of the Copyright Act and concluded that Congress did not delegate authority<\/a> to create new categories of authorship to either courts or the Copyright Office.\u00a0 The Office can grant a copyright to a compilation only when it falls under one of the eight categories established in the Copyright Act at 17 U.S.C. \u00a7 102(a):\u00a0 (1) literary works; (2) musical works; (3) dramatic works; (4) pantomimes and choreographic works; (5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works; (6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works; (7) sound recordings; and (8) architectural works.\u00a0 Applying this policy, a list of the author\u2019s favorite 50 restaurant names may be copyrightable because it may constitute a literary work. On the other hand, the Office said, a copyright to a \u201ccompilation of rocks\u201d would not stand\u2014the Office creating a new copyrightable subject matter \u201crock\u201d would exceed its authority given by Congress. \u00a0(Note, a creative compilation of rocks ending up as a sculptural or architectural work would qualify for a copyright.)\u00a0 Similarly, the Office will not approve a copyright to a compilation of \u201cfunctional physical movements such as sports movements, exercises, and other ordinary motor activities,\u201d because that does not amount to a choreographic work<\/a>, i.e., \u201can integrated, coherent, and expressive whole.\u201d \u00a0Yoga poses would fail this test, in the opinion of the Office.
\nThe Office has another ground<\/a> for refusing a copyright to yoga. The Act\u2019s 17 U.S.C. \u00a7 102(b) precludes \u201ccertain compilations that amount to an idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery,\u201d regardless of the form of expression.\u00a0 According to the Office, yoga poses may be precluded from copyright registration as a functional \u201csystem\u201d or \u201cprocess\u201d under this provision, where yoga poses are meant to result in improvements in one\u2019s physical\/mental condition (which was the case in the Open Source Yoga Unity<\/em><\/a>).
\nThe Office admitted that some registrations of compilations of exercises were \u201cissued in error\u201d in the past. Those who own such types of compilation claims, beware.<\/a>
\nGoing forward, if the Copyright Office\u2019s position is upheld, how can you protect \u201cyour own\u201d yoga poses, football games, acupuncture procedures, and the like?\u00a0 One strategy would be by recording, describing, or taking photographs of them and obtaining copyrights to these forms of expression.\u00a0 However, such copyrights protect only forms of expression and do not extend to the poses, games, or procedures themselves<\/a>. \u00a0Then, if someone filmed and broadcasted your football game without your authorization, does it follow that you cannot claim a copyright to the game, while that secret filmer can claim a copyright to his audiovisual work?\u00a0 Another strategy in such a situation might be to seek protection of your game under trademark law<\/a>.\u00a0 Interesting questions remain.
\nThe author thanks <\/em>Susan Olive<\/em><\/a> for her insightful guidance.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday, October 5, 2012, by Seiko Okada An exercise or a posture is not copyrightable under the Copyright Act.\u00a0 Whether specific sequences of movements are copyrightable has not, however, been entirely clear. The Copyright Office now has taken an official stance in an effort to resolve that question. Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram Yoga, …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7682,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057\/revisions\/7682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}