When I first read this item about how yogis are upset about the patenting of yoga moves, I was skeptical. Could this really be true? Well, a quick search reveals many examples among which this. Just so we are clear: this is not a legitimate form of property right. It is created by the state at the behest of private interests to grant monopolies, and it is just as injurious to the commonwealth as any monopoly privilege. The only reason this stuff fools people is that it is given the name “property.” In fact, there can be no property in non-scarce things.
(Special thanks to our friends at Moosetracks, the best ice cream in the world, so good that it would never need a patent to thrive!)
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Every possible range of human motion has been performed and explored. There is nothing a person can do today that hasn’t already be done. So, even under the current system of patents, no yoga move can be patented since it lacks the element of novelty.
Pfft, who seriously cares about novelty anymore? So long as it gets the Patent Office’s stamp of approval you can get anything patented.
Jeffrey,
How many free ice creams did you got for this advertisement?
And that’s not fair with the non U.S. readers, now I am dreaming about Moosetracks Ice Cream.
ha ha, if only! The reason I linked the company is that its head sent me the item. I’ve had a four-year-running dispute with him over IP in general, all kinds of intellectual sparing dating way back. To my knowledge he is not a supporter of the Mises Institute, though he should be.
“the patenting of yoga moves”
Seriously… wtf?
That’s what happens when you assign privilege to members of society based on arbitrary considerations.
FYI, see also my post Copyrights and Dancing http://blog.mises.org/6283/copyrights-and-dancing/
While not a patent per se, the term Heimlich Maneuver is trademarked. Which is why you’ll see most newer first aid manuals refer to it simply as “abdominal thrusts” or some other generically descriptive phrase.
I think it’d be great to see a news cast about someone using said procedure to help a choking victim and then make a big point about referring to it as “abdominal thrusts”. “Well, Tom, I thought about using Heimlich, but then I said to myself ‘why go name-brand? Generic works just as well’.”
“Well, Tom, I thought about using Heimlich, but I didn’t want to risk getting sued for unlicensed use, so I just let him die”
Whatever next? How long before somebody patents “Having your head stuck up your a$$”.
But the government people already have a monopoly on that.
*ba-dum-ching*
I think they call it “The Keynesian View”!
Nice.
I was hoping for a little more detail on why intellectual property is harmful. Unfortunately all my yoga instructor mom will understand of this article is where you said, “yoga.”
just gotta say, i became a certified teacher of one of those eluded to above;
in my opinion the patent is fine — you can’t copyright musical notes in general, but you can copyright a song, as well as many other things in a similar nature — the yoga practice i became certified in is a systematic particular set which works every section, organ and gland in the body in a particular sequence — much like a medicine is a particular combination of ingredients, — and medicines are all patented, its not all yoga postures, or all musical notes, but a particular order and sequence, and if someone learns those and then claims it as their own — well, just try and use the james bond theme somewhere without giving credit and see what happens for examp…
im totally cool with the copyrighting, it just needs to be properly explained, and from what i understand, thats why the courts have been totally cool with it too — in any event, im not totally knowledgeable about the specific legal matters involved and I am not volunteering to put words in others mouths; just felt obliged to offer up my own opinion as to why the copyrighting of a specific sequence of postures under the same and regulated environment makes sense to me;
you can’t copyright a hamburger, but you can trademark a restaurant chain with a name and a specific type of product and service, and that makes sense to everybody, especially 99 billion served,
i dont have much issue about this….
make another sequence, and tell everybody why you think its good, and call it something else,
then trademark that, doesnt bother me at all,
well, my opinion, thats all
best regards,
PM
The reasoning behind your argument is ok but the premises that reasoning is based on is in my view flawed.
Why should someone be able to own a set of movements, a set of notes, a set of words, a set of anything non-scarce/copyable? Simply being able to “explain” how they are different to someone elses notes, words, etc. is not sufficient in any way to prove you should “own” it. And you can’t “own” it in the way that you own any physical thing, but it’s not a physical thing. It’s fundamentally different, and just because you can explain how it was hard to come up with it or how it’s “original” doesn’t mean that ownership is a natural extension of that logic.
Go about properly establishing your premises first (why you believe you absolutely must own a set of notes/movements/etc.), before you move on to arguing about why you think it’s valid to own yoga movement combinations.
I’m going to see your argument as pretty difficult to make, because either 1, you’ll be utilitarian about it and argue that it’s necessary to own these things because otherwise people will stop sharing their new yoga move combinations (never mind the fact that they share them now absent such copyright), or 2, you’ll argue from the principle that you should own yoga move combinations by being the first one to come up with them.
If you argue from principle, you’d be very inconsistent to make arbitrary distinctions such as “yoga move combinations of no less than 10 movements can be copyrighted” or whatever distinction would need to be made for this not to be utterly ridiculous. Then what would you do if people independently came up with the same 10 movement combination?
Matthew thanks for this post. I so agree with you and feel as frustrated as you when I see these kind of things. People or Corporations today want to own or patent everything even seeds. It is so utterly ridiculous that one wonders who works in those patent offices and truly how much money do they receive to put these through.
As a yoga teacher of Vinyasa Flow, I constantly find myself in new series of poses and movement that just come through during my own personal practice. I then pass it on to my students during class. I suppose I could patent that since it was created by “me”? But no way! we are spiritual beings and our true essence (soul) is a creative entity; yet we are not the creator of it all. We have been given the ability to create but we cannot create from scratch, can we? What I am driving at is that none of it belongs to us, it belongs to the Supreme Creator, It has entrusted us we much so we can have the life we need to experience but all of it will have to stay behind when we pass on to the other world.
So why insist on patenting yoga movement that were passed on by our creator 1000s of years ago to a Master who was entrusted with such practice to pass on to his chosen students. Only very few were “ready” for yoga and those few were given the knowledge of it.
In our society we bastardize everything for greed… It is truly pathetic.
This attitude kinda demonstrates that you’re probably not all that good at what you do. Branding and reputation is what drives the yoga business, not “patenting” the order of pre-existing moves. If you have to patent moves to attempt to drive competitors out of business, you’re not a good yoga instructor.
There’s a great movie about all this Yoga, Inc. http://mises.org/daily/3173
An absurd system will of course produce absurd results. It’s hard to blame the players since we’d all love a little extra cash. I, for one, would love to patent my unique way of tilting my head and lifting my eye brows as I utter my trademark “hey baby” to passing eligible members of the opposite sex.
I think people copied the “down dog” yoga move from real dogs. Shouldn’t we then be compensating dogs, certainly the ones with the most genuine natural rights on this “patented” pose? Isn’t every yoga instructor a shameless pirate stealing from our poor helpless mutts who don’t have the means or voice to lobby congress or apply to the patent office? Where’s the AKC?
Jeez, now that I think about it, the way things are going someone might try to patent a dog stretch or trick.
Now less sarcastically, and I don’t think it’s a bad question to ask given what’s going on with ACTA, digital copyrights, etc., but is each time I do some ubiquitous stretch in the morning possibly “piracy” now? Even if by mere coincidence or happenstance I do it in a particular “order” like Peter described above? It seems absurd to even ask, but these days you never know.
As usual with this stuff, the only people who really benefit are the lawyers.
Jeffrey Tucker is on a crusade to eliminate intelectual property rights, so he’ll latch on to any story to further his cause. In the case described, Bikram has copyrighted the term Bikram Yoga and his school’s name The Yoga College of India. Bikram collects royalities from licensed schools using his trademark and has an interest in protecting his business interest. What if someone used Jeffrey Tucker’s name without his permission?
Does Jeffrey Tucker own the name Jeffrey and the surname Tucker? If I wanted to name my son Jeffrey Tucker, would I first have to get permission from Jeffrey Tucker?
The “Jeffrey Tucker” posting above is clearly a follower of the Andrew Galambos school of name-ownership
In the case described, Bikram has copyrighted the term Bikram Yoga and his school’s name The Yoga College of India.www.wxkndr.com electrical heater
I think people have a right to make money from their efforts, however one thing about patents is that they can be challenged if there is previous art.
You can trademark a name : Bikram Yoga for example
You can copyright a work in permanent form: a Yoga book or video
patents are to protect inventions
Claiming a certain set of yoga movements was “invented” by someone and were never performed by anyone else in the history of yoga is stupid.
I have come to believe that patents/copyrights are a bane to liberty. Seriously, how arrogant to think that out of the many people in America, much less the world, that you are the only one with that idea! I probably wouldn’t be opposed to them but for the fact that I think they last for too many years and can be renewed. Just look at the pharmaceutical industry, how much $ they make just by changing one ingredient… and patenting anything in nature is just wrong on so many levels. I understand why it started… to boost ingenuity/creativity by giving people a chance to make a profit on their work/ideas, but now it is taken to the extremes and threatens the very thing it was suppose to help. What happens when people can no longer grow their own food, because the seeds have all been patented?
Which brings me too… GMO/GMF, which they shouldn’t even be messing with and letting loose in the world, but if I can’t see a difference with my eyes then you shouldn’t be able to patent it, or are farmers/people suppose to start bringing a microscope with them to the fields and check every plant? Monsanto and their ilk spreading their poison without knowing what the long term effects to the environment and people. Their poison and poison seeds spread with the wind and contaminate unsuspecting farmer’s crops then they jump in, claim patent rights, and steal the whole farm when they should be paying the farmer for the damages done.
Whew! sorry… off the soapbox for now.
It is absurd to think that one could own they way the body moves. A yoga posture hasn’t been invented or creating since the ancient times. These moves have all been passed down. As they say, there is nothing new under the sun. So claiming that you invented a NEW way to move the body is just silly. I realize we should be compensated for the value we provide, but this is taking it too far.
It is important that different yoga styles have different heritages and emphases, so it is helpful that there are labels like ashtanga, vinyasa, Bikram, Iyengar out there. But since every body is different and thus practices yoga differently according to individual strengths, where is the line between individuality and property rights?
Besides that to copyright something takes lots of money, and I don’t know if it is fair to ask people to pay to take a posture.
There was an American pharmaceutical company that tried to patent Turmeric for health until the Indian government stepped in to say its use dated back centuries. I’m sure it will be the same in this instance.
This is rediculas!
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I mean, who is going to care about that? It is like copyrighting Chinese medicine, or judaism, or christianity (well, I think that one is done already, no?
How can you expact people to take the law seriously when countries allow copyright on ancient human knowledge??
I will leave a country that will try to enforce a law like that.
seriously.
Yoga belongs to the human race. It is an ancient practice. It is now known world wide, in some variations, and the great yogis that hold knowlede far beyond explanation. It CANNOT be explained in words, and what could be is not the real thing – Lao dze – Tao Te Ching –
The tao that could be spoken of is not the true tao.
So what will they copyright? the positions? So before I go to downward facing dog, I’m gonne put my credit card next to my mat and some gov. official will charge me for Using The (C) pose??
Come on… gimme a break
Westerners are wanting to put patents on “asanas” yoga poses and Asana sequences. You cannot patent the spirituality that comes with practicing and studying yoga, but you absolutely can try to patent the physical aspects of it.
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