YOGA & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

INTRODUCTION
Our traditional knowledge has always been subject of curiosity of the west but we are still less careful about our age old rich cultural heritage and the wisdom of our ancestors that is still preserved in museums in the form of manuscripts. They believed in the welfare of entire world community therefore, no concept like patent or exclusive usage of any art or science was existed in ancient India. We used to gift handwritten books to foreigners so that they could remember us. Cheiro came to India to study Palmistry and wrote a world famous book on the subject. But the situation is just opposite in today’s commercial environment.
After India’s compliance to TRIPs(Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement of WTO it should not be a matter of surprise that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued 134 patents on yoga accessories, 150 yoga-related copyrights and 2,315 yoga trademarks. In addition to it Britain has approved at least 10 trademarks relating to yoga training aids that are mentioned in ancient Indian texts. The worst "culprits" are Indians based in America, where yoga has become a $30 billion-a-year business -- a growth fueled by celebrity adherents such as Madonna. According to one report, attempts have even been made in America to patent the syllable "OM," the sacred sound with which we begin our chants.

PATENTABILITY OF YOGA
This is an undisputed fact that Yoga is the gift of India to the world. Asana is an integral part of "Astang Yoga" that was developed by Maharishi Patanjali and same was codified in his "Yog Darshan". But some self styled Yoga Gurus in west are claiming their rights over certain sequence of asanas. Now the question arises whether Yoga is patentable or not. The criteria for patentability of an invention provides that it should be novel, having inventive steps and must be capable of industrial application.

A novel invention is one, which has not been disclosed in the prior art. The term ‘prior art’ means everything that has been published, presented or otherwise disclosed to the public on the date of filing an application for patent. The prior art includes documents in foreign languages disclosed in any format in any country of the world. In order to be novel, the disclosed information in respect of any invention should not be available in the 'prior art'. This means that there should not be any prior disclosure of any information contained in the application for patent. Such information should not be anywhere in the public domain (either written or in any other form, or in any language) before the date on which the application is first filed i.e. the 'priority date'.

Though Yoga was not considered to be in public domain in western countries, therefore efforts had been made to get various yoga poses and techniques patented so as to exploit the same commercially. A case study given below is relevant in this regard.

COPYRIGHT & TRADEMARK ON YOGA: A CASE STUDY
Bikram Choudhury, a U.S. based Indian, claimes that the 26 postures he has strung together in a sequence, and which his followers perform, twice per session, in room heated to 105F, is his intellectual property. Further, he says that these poses cannot be taught either in the same sequence or any derivative thereof, without the teacher having graduated from his personal training program. The fee for this programme is $5,000 per person.
Choudhury opened his first yoga school in 1973, in San Francisco, and now claims over 900 schools worldwide. In the US, where the popularity of yoga is underlined by an estimated 19 million practitioners and annual revenues in the region of $30 billion, his Bikram Yoga School is front-runner. He has celebrity clients ranging from pop diva Madonna to tennis superstar Serena Williams.

On completing the training program, the person still cannot teach the 26 asanas outside the Bikram Yoga umbrella, unless he pays a franchise fee. An organisation OSYU(Open Source Yoga Unity) challenged this in court and contended that yoga is a 5,000-year-old tradition, and cannot be copyrighted by anyone. The question came before the court for adjudication as to whether Choudhury is in fact entitled to copyright and trademark the 26 poses, all of which are taken from the 84 poses that make up classic Indian yoga.

The OSYU case followed when Choudhury's lawyers sent letters to over 100 institutions, asking them to cease teaching what the letters claimed were yoga courses that were close to the version taught in the Bikram Yoga courses.

On 3rd May, 2005 Bikram Choudhury and Open Source Yoga Unity ("OSYU") announced that they have settled the litigation between them involving OSYU's claim that Bikram's copyrights and trademarks relating to "Bikram Yoga" are invalid, and that Bikram engaged in copyright misuse by sending out cease and desist letters. The parties have reached a mutually satisfactory resolution of their differences, and the lawsuit has been dismissed. Now both are working together to bring the benefits of yoga to the world.

CONCLUSION
In the light of the fact that foreign practitioners are already said to have claimed hundreds of patents and copyrights on poses and techniques lifted straight from classical Indian yoga treatises, it is high time to be aware about the Yoga piracy. The Government of India has recently established a task force on ‘traditional knowledge and intellectual property theft’ under the chairmanship of Shri Vinod Gupta. In an effort to protect India's heritage, the task force has begun documenting 1,500 yoga postures drawn from classical yoga texts -- including the writings of the Indian sage, Patanjali, the first man to codify the art of yoga. The data is being stored in a digital library whose computerized contents will soon be made available to patent offices worldwide.

The information on Yoga has been in the public domain in India for thousands of years and therefore it is not patentable in our country. But, until now, it has only been available in languages which people in the outside world cannot understand. Therefore, some Yoga practitioners in west including persons of Indian origin claimed exclusive rights over it. Now the time has come to recognize and protect our traditional knowledge. We need not to see for the approval of west for accepting and practicing our age old tradition of Yoga.
The need of the hour is that make people aware about the impact of present intellectual property regime on our traditional knowledge as most of us are unaware about the intellectual property laws prevailing in India and all over the world. Though India is one of the signatories of the TRIPs Agreement, it was mandatory for us to have TRIPs compatible IP laws as a result of which we have made necessary changes in our Patent Act of 1970 and enacted new legislations such as Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmer’s Rights Act, 2001; the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 etc. Earlier, the medicinal properties of turmeric, neem etc. were patented by some U.S. companies and we had to fight for getting them back, now our Yoga is under threat. It requires collective efforts from all of us so that no exclusive right in respect of our traditional knowledge could be claimed by any individual or organisation to the detriment of public at large.