Iyengar Yoga Legal Challenge
We want to update a situation that has been developing over the last few years, related to the name 'iyengar'.
As you know, Yoga Center Madrid has always intended since its founding to maintain an open teaching in the field of yoga, free of intransigence and indoctrination, hence we have always offered yoga classes of different styles: hatha, iyengar, ashtanga and several others, and training courses such as Yoga Instructors and Teachers of various styles, including Iyengar Yoga since 2000. We have always maintained respect towards each one of these styles or traditions.
We want to inform you that in the last ten years, the Spanish Iyengar Yoga Association (AEIY), of which we are not a part, has tried to prevent us from using the term "yoga iyengar". They have sent us letters of aggressivene condemnation, since 2006.
Our response to AEYI during these years has been that our defense was based on the qualification of our faculty, on the freedom of practice, and on the recognition that the term "yoga iyengar" is broadly and internationally recognized as a generic term and is also the only way in which that style can be identified.
Now more than ten years since the first letter, last December 2016, we have received a lawsuit for the use of that term. Of course, we have hired a trademark law firm, and we have responded to the claim with arguments based on extensive international research on the use of this term. This search has revealed that AEYI has registered the use of "Iyengar" solely for the provision of sports services and not to denominate a style of yoga, since the latter could have been denied ex officio, since the term "yoga iyengar" Is considered internationally as a generic sign necessary for the identification of a yoga style. Furthermore, our use of the term is legal and descriptive for this style of yoga; and that in any case we have been using that name for more than fifteen years without the AEYI having initiated any judicial action, even knowing that Yoga Center Madrid, like many others, used the name "iyengar."
We have received the court's decision.
We hope this information will clarify the situation in which Yoga Center S.L. Madrid finds itself before AEYI, and we reiterate our total respect for the tradition of yoga in its different forms, which has always been part of the professionalism of Yoga Center.
The Yoga Center Madrid Faculty and Administration
