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ABOUT PILATES
The Pilates Lawsuit
Court overturns Pilates Trademarks
What’s in a name? Plenty, especially if the name is “Pilates,” one of the hottest fitness trends in America. An October 2000 decision in Manhattan’s federal court declared that Pilates, like yoga and karate, is an exercise method and not a trademark. The decision affected thousands of Pilates instructors who had been prevented from saying that they taught Pilates. “Imagine if you were a yoga teacher, and couldn‘t say ‘yoga’ – you were forced to describe it in some other way,” said Marie José Blom-Lawrence, a Pilates instructor since 1980. “Pilates instructors were in the same boat.”
The four-year case pitted Sean Gallagher, owner of the Manhattan-based Pilates Studio, against Ken Endelman and Balanced Body Inc., the world‘s largest manufacturer of Pilates equipment. On October 19, 2000, U.S. District Court Judge Miriam Cedarbaum ruled that the Pilates trademarks were invalid. She directed the United States Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the marks immediately.
Pilates ruled “generic”
The Court‘s 93-page opinion, which invalidated Gallagher’s trademarks for Pilates exercise services and Pilates equipment, found that Pilates is a generic term. Since “consumers identify the word ‘Pilates’ as a particular method of exercise,” the Court found, “plaintiff cannot monopolize [it].” Gallagher was also found to have “deliberately attempted to mislead” the United States Patent and Trademark office by falsely claiming in sworn documents that he had manufactured Pilates equipment.
Many qualified Pilates teachers in the U.S.
The Court rejected Gallagher’s argument that only his teachers were qualified to teach the Pilates method, citing testimony from Gallagher’s own witnesses that there were many other qualified Pilates instructors in the United States. Some of those teachers, including trial witnesses Kathy Grant and Ron Fletcher, had studied decades ago with Joseph Pilates, the founder of the Pilates method. The court noted that during his lifetime, Joseph Pilates had “promoted his method of exercises and attempted to increase its use by the public” and “never did anything to prevent others from using the name to describe what they taught.”
Trademarks protect brand names, not exercise methods
During the trial, Romana Kryzanowska, who also studied with Joseph Pilates, was asked what she did for a living. “I teach Pilates,” she replied. That statement proved fatal to the Pilates trademarks. Trademarks don’t cover exercise methods – they can only protect brand names of goods and services.
Over the years, Kryzanowska taught many students who went on to become Pilates teachers. Like Kathy Grant and Ron Fletcher, as well as other Pilates protégés including Carola Trier and Eve Gentry, Kryzanowska made a career of teaching and training others in Pilates’ method. From all these “first generation” teachers, a second generation arose, then a third, creating a geometric increase in the numbers of Pilates teachers and practitioners.
1992: Gallagher brings first court actions against Pilates instructors
Nonetheless, beginning shortly after he acquired the Pilates Studio and exercise instruction service marks in August 1992, Sean Gallagher began taking legal action against Pilates instructors, claiming that he alone had the right to use “Pilates.” Gallagher claimed that the right came to him through Kryzanowska, whom Gallagher falsely presented to the public as having been “hand-picked” by Joe Pilates to be his successor. Other teachers taught by Joe, according to Gallagher, were imposters, teaching something that could not properly be called “Pilates.” Through this strategy Gallagher intimidated hundreds of Pilates teachers into using the “P” word only behind closed studio doors or after paying yearly fees to him.
Strengthening Gallagher’s claim was the fact that his trademarks for “Pilates Studio” and “Pilates” (as the brand name for exercise instruction services, not a method of exercise) had been registered with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) in the 1980s. There was thus a chain of title beginning about 1982 from the Pilates Studio, then run by Kryzanowska, to Aris-Isotoner in the mid-80s, to Healite, which ran the Pilates Studio into the ground in 1989. The color of the law, combined with Gallagher’s money, provided ample reason for many Pilates teachers – whose salaries could not possibly sustain a litigation – to capitulate to Gallagher’s demands.
Many qualified Pilates teachers in the U.S.
The Court rejected Gallagher’s argument that only his teachers were qualified to teach the Pilates method, citing testimony from Gallagher’s own witnesses that there were many other qualified Pilates instructors in the United States. Some of those teachers, including trial witnesses Kathy Grant and Ron Fletcher, had studied decades ago with Joseph Pilates, the founder of the Pilates method. The court noted that during his lifetime, Joseph Pilates had “promoted his method of exercises and attempted to increase its use by the public” and “never did anything to prevent others from using the name to describe what they taught.”
Pilates ruled “generic”
The Court‘s 93-page opinion, which invalidated Gallagher’s trademarks for Pilates exercise services and Pilates equipment, found that Pilates is a generic term. Since “consumers identify the word ‘Pilates’ as a particular method of exercise,” the Court found, “plaintiff cannot monopolize [it].” Gallagher was also found to have “deliberately attempted to mislead” the United States Patent and Trademark office by falsely claiming in sworn documents that he had manufactured Pilates equipment.
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