2004-06-17 US "Open Source Yoga Unity" contesting copyright claims to a Yoga method
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Attempts of copyrighting a functional processes, which currently can't be patented at the USPTO.
Yoga businesses who want to use the Bikram method for free call themselves "Open Source Yoga Unity".
Comments
Hartmut Pilch (ffii)
"Open source" is beginning to be used as a term for people who contest other people's exclusivity claims, rather than for people who create less exclusive alternatives. It would be more straightforward to use the term "free" here, since these people are arguably fighting for the freedom of Yoga, and of course they want to use the Bikram method for free. But, apparently for marketing purposes, the group is using the term "open source" as a euphemism for "free", apparently trying to borrow some of the fame of a movement which has, unlike OSYU, focussed on creating its own copyrighted works, rather than on contesting exclusivity claims of others. E.g. nobody in the free / opensource software community contests the copyright of Microsoft on MS Windows and MS Office.
The Economist's argument that copyright should not cover functional but only esthetic processes is slightly beside the point. Usage instructions, software and many other creations are functional and covered by copyright.
The real question is whether Bikram Choudhury is claiming exclusivity to something which is not his individual creation but rather a general principle (algorithm) which he discovered and other people would also have been likely to discover and whose exclusive ownership makes the creation of alternatives impossible. In the Bikram Yoga case it may be difficult to objectively verify whether the method works. If the method could be executed in a causally overseeable way, it might have been eligible for a US patent. In order to own his method by means of copyright, Bikram Choudhury would probably have to contradict his own claims and pretend/admit that his method is nothing more than an individual creation, as might typically be covered by copyright or trademark.
Open source businesses usually attach great importance to their trademarks.
The Opensource Initiative (OSI) even tried to trademark the term OpenSource. If they had succeded, they might now want to sue OSYU for free-riding on the term without creating copyrighted works under a license that conforms to the OSI definitions.
