The U.S. Copyright Office announced today it will stop issuing copyright registrations for compilations of exercises or the selection and arrangement of yoga poses.
The announcement came in a policy statement clarifying the Copyright Office's practices relating to its examination of claims in compilations - - particularly with respect to claims of copyrightable authorship in the selection and arrangement of "uncopyrightable matter." It also clarified its policies for registration of choreographic works.
Historically the Copyright Office has accepted registration claims based on the "selection, coordination, or arrangement" of uncopyrightable elements, because the Copyright Act specifically states that copyrightable authorship includes compilations pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 103. Viewed in a vacuum, the Copyright Office explained that one might conclude that any organization of preexisting material may be copyrightable.
An unanswered question under copyright law has been whether the selection, coordination, or arrangement of preexisting materials must relate to the categories of copyrightable subject matter. Today's policy statement today answered that question, at least for the Copyright Office; the answer was yes.
Because yoga and other forms of exercise are not copyrightable (they are not included among the categories of copyrightable subject matter under § 102 of the Copyright Act), compilations of those poses are not copyrightable either. (However, books, drawings and photographs of them would nevertheless be protectable because they qualify, for example, as visual and literary works - - that is, works that are copyrightable.)
The Copyright Office also explained that although choreography is copyrightable, simple dance routines generally are not. "[T]he selection, coordination or arrangement of dance steps does not transform a compilation of dance steps into a choreographic work unless the resulting work amounts to an integrated and coherent compositional whole." And Copyright Office policy holds that "a selection, coordination, or arrangement of functional physical movements such as sports movements, exercises, and other ordinary motor activities alone do not represent the type of authorship intended to be protected… as a choreographic work."
However, the landscape is vast between, for example, a series of push-ups, sit-ups and jumping jacks compared with other forms of exercise whose arrangement may not be purely functional, and may actually result in an integrated work and "coherent compositional whole." A prominent Pilates teacher, studio owner and former ballet dancer Zoë Hagler Marcus, reached for comment at studio in Pasadena California, noted that "drawing the line between choreography and a series of exercises may be difficult to define."
In any event, today's policy statement promises to be a major development in the exercise community. Yoga, Pilates, Feldenkrais, Zumba, QiGong & Karate studio owners and others who believe they have arranged original compilations of exercises will now face new hurdles in fending off the competition. Much like the mass dilution that flowed from the loss of the Pilates trademark a decade ago, today's announcement marks a new challenge in the effort to prevent unauthorized copying and unfair competition in the exercise world. One example: a copyright registration is ordinarily a prerequisite to filing a copyright infringement lawsuit in Federal court.
A copy of the Copyright Office's announcement can be found here.
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