Yoga Pose Sequence Not Copyrightable Material

The founder of Bikram Yoga, Bikram Choudhury, recently filed suit against two of his trainees. The trainees formed their own yoga studio and used the identical Bikram Yoga sequence contained in Choudhury's federally copyrighted book. The court held that the copyright protected only the books containing the compilation of exercises. It did not protect the sequence of those exercises because that sequence is a collection of facts and ideas and not a creative work of expression.