5000-year-old yoga copyrighted?

He also hired lawyers who set loose a flurry of cease-and-desist letters warning yoga teachers in the Bay Area and beyond not to teach his yoga or anything ‘‘derivative’’ if they haven’t graduated from his $5,000-per-person training programme and are not paying a studio franchise fee. His letters threaten a penalty of $150,000 per infringement.

Now, a San Francisco non-profit organisation of yoga enthusiasts from San Rafael to Ft Lauderdale, Florida, is countering with a federal lawsuit attacking the guru’s claim that yoga is proprietory. They say that yoga is a 5,000-year-old tradition that cannot be owned. A trial date has been set for next February.

‘‘We’re not disputing that Choudhury did something creative and useful in putting the postures together in a certain order,’’ says Elizabeth Rader, an attorney representing the non-profit Open Source Yoga Unity. ‘‘Our belief is that you can’t treat the poses as private property.’’ Choudhury doesn’t stop with cease-and-desist letters. In July, he won a copyright-infringement suit against the owners of a Southern California yoga studio. Under the settlement, the operators agreed to pay Choudhury an undisclosed sum and never teach Bikram-style yoga.

Choudhury said he has copyrighted the sequence, not the postures. That, he says, is his intellectual property.