Yoga ©2003!?!??

So after thirty years of teaching yoga, Bikram Choudhury has registered a sequence of yoga moves with the U.S. Copyright Office, and now he is claiming that he "will be entitled to receive an award of statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement and can also recover his attorneys? fees from infringers in lawsuits concerning copyright infringement of the sequence." There's only one problem. As a very smart copyright lawyer, Ken Swezey, points out in this Salon piece: "Copyright law protects 'expression,' not ideas or processes. . . . A court would have to be convinced that a sequence of the exercises is original, protectable 'expression' rather than merely collection of factual material." Every now and then, one of my e-mail lists on I.P. issues hosts a debate over whether false and harassing assertions of copyright ought to be actionable. But if Bikram Choudhury starts winning these suits, I'll have to think about copyrighting the waltz, typing, and jumping jacks.