New York, Dec 4 (ANI): Former disciple of Indian yoga king Bikram Choudhury has said that he is all set to fight the copyright lawsuit filed by his former mentor.
Greg Gumucio, who is the founder of East Village-based 'Yoga to the People' has vowed that he won't back down after Choudhury sued him in September, claiming his eight-studio chain is ripping off the sweat-lodge-style yoga philosophy that underpins the uber -popular Bikram Yoga empire.
Gumucio said that he will file a sharply worded answer to the Los Angeles lawsuit this week, in a bid at defiance designed to shake Choudhury out of his tree pose, the New York Daily News reported.
"This is so ludicrous!" Gumucio said.
"What if the people who first originated these yoga poses claimed ownership and prevented people from teaching? It's just crazy to me."
Gumucio, a former Choudhury disciple and 1996 graduate of the famed Bikram Yoga instructor school has asserted that his firm's "Traditional Hot Yoga" class is absolutely legal.
He said that he is careful about not trading off Choudhury's name.
Gumucio admitted that though the class features the same 26-pose sequence popularized by Choudhury, but one can't copyright a workout sequence - or the setting of a thermostat to 105 degrees.
"The copyright statute expressly forbids copyrights for systems and methods of operation. It excludes recipes, sporting events, games and business methods," said Yoga to the People lawyer and Harvard Law professor William Fisher.
"If you write a cookbook with descriptions of how lovely something tastes and how it's suitable for certain parties, you can copyright that language, but you can't copyright the recipes."
But Team Choudhury is striking a far different pose.
"This 26-pose sequence already has a copyright," Choudhury's lawyer Robert Gilchrest said.
"It's like a series of dance steps; like the choreography in a musical. And musicals are copyrighted."
Gilchrest said that comparing Bikram Yoga to a musical and not a sporting event doesn't detract from its therapeutic benefits. Soothing music can be used for its calming effect. That doesn't render it any less of an art form," he said.
Gumucio said his stand is about principle and it would be easier to change two moves in the routine and move on.
"But I'm being compelled by something much bigger. I can't imagine someone having sole discretion over who can and can't teach yoga."
"I would quit teaching hot yoga tomorrow if Bikram said he understood he doesn't own the sequence. He used to tell me, verbatim: 'I 'm teaching exactly what my guru taught me,'" he added. (ANI)
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