## Facts

- Bikram Choudhury developed a 90-minute hot-yoga regimen consisting of twenty-six postures and two breathing exercises performed in a fixed order in a heated, humid room.
- He described the regimen in a 1979 book, *Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class*, and obtained copyright registrations for the book and for a “compilation” described as a “sequence of yoga asanas.”
- Mark Drost and Zefea Samson completed Bikram teacher training, later formed Evolation Yoga, and offered hot-yoga classes alleged to use the same twenty-six postures and two breathing exercises in the same order under similar heat conditions.
- Plaintiffs alleged defendants infringed by teaching and performing the sequence as part of their classes, independent of copying the book’s text or images.

## Issues

1. Whether the sequence of twenty-six yoga poses and two breathing exercises, apart from the book’s textual and visual descriptions, is copyrightable subject matter.
2. Whether the sequence is protectable as a “compilation” based on selection and arrangement of otherwise unprotectable elements.
3. Whether the sequence is protectable as a “choreographic work” despite its asserted health-improving function.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of partial summary judgment for defendants.
- The court held the yoga sequence is an unprotectable idea, process, or system under 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).
- The court held the sequence is not rendered copyrightable by labeling it a “compilation” or a “choreographic work.”
- The court recognized plaintiffs’ copyright protection in the book’s expression (words and images) but not in the underlying regimen of poses and breathing exercises.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright protects expression, not ideas; under 17 U.S.C. § 102(b), protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, or method of operation.
- A functional method of exercise designed to produce health benefits is a process or system excluded from copyright protection, even if described in a copyrighted literary work.
- Compilations may be protected only to the extent the selection and arrangement reflect protectable expression; an arrangement dictated by functional purpose remains unprotectable.
- A claim of “choreographic work” cannot be used to obtain copyright over a functional system barred by § 102(b).
- Copyright in a descriptive work (text and illustrations) does not confer exclusive rights to perform, teach, or use the underlying method described.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that Bikram’s fixed sequence of poses and breathing exercises, characterized as a health-improving regimen, is an uncopyrightable system under § 102(b); only the expressive elements of the book describing the sequence are protected.


Bikram’s Yoga Coll. of India, L.P. v. Evolation Yoga, LLC, 803 F.3d 1032 (9th Cir. 2015)