Downward-facing dog can no longer be copyrighted. Regulators have decided that yoga poses are “exercises” not “choreography” and can’t be copyrighted like they used to be. The ruling was sparked by a trademark lawsuit by Bikram Yoga College of India against New York’s Yoga to the People and Evolation Yoga.
The Indian school claims the New York studios appropriated his methods and exercises. They counter that the sequences and poses can’t be copyrighted. Bikram Yoga lawyer Robert Gilchrest noted that the Copyright Office has issued hundreds of copyrights for exercise videos. “But now they’re saying they’re looking at it again and they’ve changed their mind?” he told Bloomberg. “It is meaningless to this litigation.”