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Bikram Choudhury is the developer of the very popular “hot yoga” system, where a carefully selected series of 26 yoga positions is performed for 90 minutes in a room heated to 105 degrees. The success of the system has made him very wealthy, and litigious. He has threatened and sued yoga studios claiming his carefully arranged system is protectable by copyright law as either a compilation or choreography. Now one rival studio has taken Bikram “to the mat” saying his sequence of poses is not protected by copyright at all. Who’s right? Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle J.D., details the major points of the court’s ruling and finds you don’t need to bend over backwards to teach the yoga poses you have in mind.

The old adage that “justice is blind” came to mind again last week, but not in a good way. In the latest head-scratching decision from the 9th Circuit Court, a Court of Appeals for the first time has ruled that an inanimate object portrayed in an audio-visual work was in fact a “character” capable of copyright protection. The case, DC Comics v. Towle, pitted the venerable comic book company against a manufacturer of full scale, real-life, working “Batmobiles.” Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle J.D., explores the problems inherent in this decision and shows how the Court could have achieved the same result, in fewer steps, using existing case law.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently weighed in on a topic that has bedeviled courts for years: what parts of an article of clothing are copyrightable? Fashion designs are generally not eligible for copyright protection because they are “useful articles.” Even when the designer adds more decorative elements, this is usually not enough to move a dress into a work of art. This is why you see a dress in Sak’s Fifth Avenue one week and a few weeks later you see the same dress in Target. But fabric designs can be copyrighted. Can you separate one from the other? Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., takes a look at this and previous decisions to determine: can you give this cheerleader uniform a “©”?

The days of whispering on the phone and the “no-tell motel” seem to be over. The internet has taken over the job of connecting people who wish to cheat on their spouses. But, as with all things secret, sometimes they get found out. On June 19, 2015, news broke that the online service for cheating spouses, Ashley Madison, had been hacked. What’s worse, the hackers threatened to expose the names and addresses of the reported 37 million users of the site. Ashley Madison sent out DMCA takedown notices to plug the leaks. But did Ashley Madison have the legal right to send them out? Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., takes a look at what the Supreme Court has said about claiming copyright in a collection of facts, and it doesn’t look good for the cheaters.