Here's a big "WTF" regarding bullshit patents and copyrights:
May 7, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
A Big Stretch
By SUKETU MEHTA
I GREW up watching my father stand on his head every morning. He was doing sirsasana, a yoga pose that accounts for his youthful looks well into his 60s. Now he might have to pay a royalty to an American patent holder if he teaches the secrets of his good health to others. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks. There’s big money in those pretzel twists and contortions — $3 billion a year in America alone.
It’s a mystery to most Indians that anybody can make that much money from the teaching of a knowledge that is not supposed to be bought or sold like sausages. Should an Indian, in retaliation, patent the Heimlich maneuver, so that he can collect every time a waiter saves a customer from choking on a fishbone?
Knowledge in ancient India was protected by caste lines, not legal or economic ones. The term "intellectual property" was an oxymoron: the intellect could not be anybody’s property. You did not pay your guru in coin; you herded his cows and married his daughter, and passed on the knowledge to others when you were sufficiently steeped in it. This tradition continues today, most notably in Indian classical music, none of whose melodies have been copyrighted.
Still, Indians get upset every time they hear reports — often overblown — of Westerners’ stealing their age-old wisdom, through the mechanism of copyright law. They were outraged by a story last year of some Americans trying to copyright the sacred Hindu syllable "om" — which would be like trade-marking "amen."
The author also goes on to explain that many of the people trying to put IP locks on yoga are Indians living in the United States, or Indian-Americans. I wonder what would happen if I went out and tried to copyright the bible? Or what if I tried to copyright the Torah? Granted you can copyright certain translations, but what if I tried to copyright the work in its entirety?
This is yet another reason for why we need patent and copyright reform.