Yoga Moves Can’t be Copyrighted, says Court

Posted Friday, October 9, 2015 by Andrew Charles Huff

A federal appeals court decided this week that Yoga poses may not receive copyright protection. The case was brought by Bikram Choudhury, an Indian yoga guru who popularized “hot yoga” in the U.S. He argued that a yoga studio violated his copyright to a sequence of poses and two breathing exercises he developed and described in a 1979 book. However, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said yoga poses are not protected by copyright law.