New: No Copyright or Trademark Protection for Tensegrity

Just added to the site here a page summarizing the lawsuit filed by former Cleargreen employees and Tensegrity instructors Aerin Alexander and Miles Reid against Cleargreen. The case resulted in a ruling that there is no copyright or trademark protection for Tensegrity or the movements referred to as Magical Passes.

Cleargreen and Laugan Productions, Inc. (which produced the original Tensegrity videos), counterclaimed in the lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Southern California in 2011. The counterclaim asserted that Aerin and Miles’s Being Energy workshops were an infringement on the defendants’ copyrights on Tensegrity and Carlos Castaneda’s Magical Passes book, and an unlawful use of trademarked Tensegrity and Magical Passes. The court ruled on Aerin and Miles’s summary judgment motion in 2012, however, deciding that the Tensegrity and Magical Passes movements were in the public domain (i.e., not copyrightable). The court also ruled that Cleargreen and Laugan’s trademarks were unenforceable against Aerin and Miles.

Besides detailing the court’s ruling that Tensegrity had no copyright or trademark protection, and the final settlement between the parties that allowed both sides to move on claiming their material derived from the same lineage, the piece also recounts the aftermath of the court’s decision. Aerin and Miles offered instruction and workshops under the Being Energy brand and trademark for several years until the two separated by 2019 and ultimately divorced.

Aerin is now based in Hilo, Hawaii, and is sole proprietor of Being Energy, while Miles, who continues his acupuncture practice in Los Angeles, has hung up a new shingle: Energy Life Sciences Institute (aka Center for Integrative Health). As the piece concludes, with Cleargreen workshop activities now moribund (i.e., only a couple of canned video offerings are now available) it appears that as of 2024, Miles Reid has essentially replaced Cleargreen as the source for post-Castaneda ersatz “magical passes of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico.”

Related Links:

• Tensegrity Copyright & Trademark Dispute
• Tensegrity’s Similarity to Other Movement Systems
• Eagle’s Trust Agreement Summarized
• Summary of Castaneda’s Lawsuit Against Victor Sanchez
• Statement by Victor Sanchez regarding Castaneda vs. Sanchez and related topics