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Yoga Wars! India Blocks Patents On Poses
The Indian government wants people to stop trying to patent ancient yoga practices.
So officials are filming hundreds of yoga poses and translating ancient Sanscrit texts. They plan to send the results to patent offices around the world next month, the Washington Post reports.
It's an outgrowth of a project called the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, which was originally created to fight patents on traditional Indian medicine — like turmeric for wound healing, which received a U.S. patent that was later withdrawn after India objected.
"Yoga is collective knowledge and is available for use by everybody no matter what the interpretation," the head of the digital library told the WaPo. "...we wanted to ensure that, in the future, nobody will be able to claim that he has created a yoga posture which was actually already created in 2500 B.C. in India."
The fight over who owns yoga got a lot of attention a few years back when Bikram Choudhury said a series of yoga positions done in a room heated to over 100 degrees was his intellectual property. Legal fights ensued.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/08/23/129381241/india-yoga-patents-html
So officials are filming hundreds of yoga poses and translating ancient Sanscrit texts. They plan to send the results to patent offices around the world next month, the Washington Post reports.
It's an outgrowth of a project called the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, which was originally created to fight patents on traditional Indian medicine — like turmeric for wound healing, which received a U.S. patent that was later withdrawn after India objected.
"Yoga is collective knowledge and is available for use by everybody no matter what the interpretation," the head of the digital library told the WaPo. "...we wanted to ensure that, in the future, nobody will be able to claim that he has created a yoga posture which was actually already created in 2500 B.C. in India."
The fight over who owns yoga got a lot of attention a few years back when Bikram Choudhury said a series of yoga positions done in a room heated to over 100 degrees was his intellectual property. Legal fights ensued.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/08/23/129381241/india-yoga-patents-html
It is absolutely ridiculous to be allowing patents on ancient knowledge. This includes Yoga poses and any ancient medical knowledge. Patents should be for NEW innovations not previously known. Not things that some have been since ancient times.
An organizatiion in Mumbai (indi) is compiliing about 1500 postures to include into the compedium. The above site is very interesting. Many posters have expressed their opinions on the patenti spree.
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