I came across this recently, which neatly summarized this New York Times article. The gist is that there are currently about 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories, and 2,315 yoga trademarks. This is all well and good for a capitalist society, but the author's point is that Indians are getting more and more perturbed by the day with all this, since it is ALL based on centuries-old Indian culture and traditions. Kinda makes the whole concept of patenting and trademarking it today rather laughable.

The author extends this argument to pharmaceuticals. The drug companies make billions upon billions of dollars off of drugs that are essentially rehashes of long-time herbal remedies. The Indian government estimates that 2000 patents are issued each year based off of traditional Indian treatments.

Somebody even tried to trademark the Hindu syllable "om". He likens this to trying to trademark "Amen".

Pretty interesting stuff. Check it out.

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