India moves to patent yoga poses in bid to protect traditional knowledge

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India moves to patent yoga poses in bid to protect traditional

knowledge

 

By Dean Nelson in New Delhi

Last Updated: 1:57AM GMT 23 Feb 2009

India has set up a team of Hindu gurus and 200 scientists to identify

all ancient yoga positions or asanas and register each one to

stop " patent pirates " from stealing its " traditional knowledge " .

So far, they have added 600 asanas to India's Traditional Knowledge

Digital Library to stop so-called gurus in the United States and

Europe patenting established poses as their own.

India has been angered at attempts by mostly American yoga teachers

to patent moves from their classes as their own originals.

Since its arrival in Britain and America in the late 1960s and early

1970s, when it was popularised by Beatles guitarist George Harrison,

among others, Yoga has become a $225 billion industry.

In India, however, it remains collective knowledge – practiced in

public parks where gurus often teach fast breathing exercises, like

pranayam, and different 'sun-salutations,' free of charge.

But as the number of Western yoga teachers has grown, there has been

a steady increase in patent applications claiming each pose in their

class is not part of the ancient discipline of mind and body, but

their own unique invention. In the United States alone, there have

been more than 130 yoga-related patents, 150 copyrights and 2,300

trademarks. Now India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library is

being made available to patents offices throughout the world so they

can establish whether the claim is a genuine innovation or " prior

art " from Indian systems of medicine.

So far a team of yoga gurus from nine schools have worked with

government officials and 200 scientists from the Council of

Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to scan 35 ancient texts

including the Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and the Bhagwad Gita, and

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras to register each native pose.

The attempt by US teachers to patent traditional poses has caused

disbelief and anger in India, where it has been practiced for around

6,000 years.

" Copyrights over yoga postures and trademarks on yoga tools have

become rampant in the West. Till now, we have traced 130 yoga-related

patents in the US. We hope to finish putting on record at least 1500

yoga postures by the end of 2009, " said Dr V.P Gupta, of the CSIR,

who created the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library