Table of contents
Miles Reid v. Cleargreen, Inc. (Tensegrity copyright and trademark dispute)
This article delves into the Carlos Castaneda/Cleargreen, Inc., Tensegrity Copyright Trademark Dispute, examining the key issues and implications.
Introduction
This is the story of how Cleargreen countersued two of its former employees and Tensegrity instructors, and lost badly. A summary judgment in 2012 by the federal district court in California, where the case was filed, determined that the movements Castaneda peddled as Tensegrity and claimed were “discovered in dreaming” thousands of years earlier by ancient Mexican sorcerers, couldn’t be copyright or trademark protected.
Not only is copyright protection limited in time and cannot be applied to things that supposedly originated hundreds of years in the past, copyright isn’t really designed to protect things like physical movements anyway, just the intellectual property (i.e., books or videos) generated to teach or demonstrate them.
Lawsuit Background
The two who sued when they left Cleargreen in 2010 to start marketing their own Tensegrity instruction sessions and videos–Aerin Alexander and Miles Reid–claimed they had been obstructed in trying to organize their own workshops by Cleargreen, which they claimed had contacted prospective workshop attendees to persuade them not to participate. Hence their suit for declaratory relief establishing that Cleargreen’s copyright and trademark claims were invalid. Cleargreen responded by filing counterclaims against Aerin and Miles.
As covered on the Cleargreen page here, Cleargreen, Inc., is the for-profit corporation Castaneda established in 1995 to organize and market Tensegrity workshops worldwide. Another organization he had set up years earlier, Laugan [“nagual” backward] Productions, Inc., produced and held the rights to Tensegrity videos that were produced in Castaneda’s lifetime.
After Castaneda died, Cleargreen needed new material to keep drawing audiences for Tensegrity instruction workshops. In the early months, they relied on the creativity of Halley Alexander, among others, for generating new passes that had supposedly come down from Castaneda’s sorcery lineage. It was pretty obvious to those of us who had been attending the Tensegrity workshops for years, and who knew Halley, Miles, Aerin and the others that were then on the Cleargreen payroll as Tensegrity instructors (who had originally been in the Sunday group like me and other Sustained Action authors), that that was what was happening.
At some early stage, Halley, who was no longer the star–since her major backers, the Blue Scout and Castaneda, were dead–got bored and left. Miles, however, along with his wife Aerin Alexander, continued to adapt, modify and generate new movements that were the subject of seminars in the several years following Castaneda’s death. Aerin, formerly Maria Guadalupe Blanco, was a late addition to the Cleargreen shareholders list and a beneficiary under Castaneda’s will. It also surfaced as a result of Miles and Aerin’s complaint, which was filed against Cleargreen and Laugan on October 5, 2011, that Aerin had been adopted by Nury Alexander (the Blue Scout) as her daughter, making her, in the words of the complaint, Carlos Castaneda’s “only descendant.”
I know that when Aerin was brought into the group in 1996, and Castaneda referred to her in private sessions as “the little otter” and “the Gerber baby,” there was an effort to secure her right to stay in the country since she was an Argentine citizen here on a travel visa. Florinda and others had researched ways of legalizing her status through employment, and Nury might have adopted her in an attempt to bring her in as a “family member.” Marrying Miles, who was a U.S. citizen having originally been born in the U.S. before his family returned to Argentina, was clearly a more effective route.
[Full disclosure: Back when we were both involved with Castaneda and his group, circa 1996-97, the former Element and Tensegrity instructor who legally changed his name to the one Castaneda gave him, Miles Reid, was my chiropractor for injuries I suffered when I was rear ended on the freeway on the way to a Castaneda Sunday session. I also subsequently helped Miles with his divorce from his first wife.]
Aerin and Miles’s complaint alleged that in Cleargreen’s workshops, “Cleargreen and/or Laugan sometimes use or teach the original Tensegrity movements that appeared in the instructional videos or in the Magical Passes [book by Castaneda], but instead mostly use the modified Tensegrity movements co-created by Miles Reid and Aerin Alexander.” They also alleged that in a letter dated March 7, 2011, Cleargreen and Laugan wrote them “asserting various rights and actions that if undertaken by Reid and Aerin would amount to an infringement of Cleargreen and Laugan’s rights including an alleged right in the ‘sequence of movements’ in their Tensegrity or Magical Passes classes; a copyright in recapitulation exercises including written questions used during instructions or as a component in their classes, as well as video recordings, photographs, drawings and written description of such exercises, and rights in the trademarks Tensegrity and Magical Passes.”
Hence the couple’s lawsuit, charging that the Tensegrity movements and sequences in Cleargreen and Laugan’s materials “are not assembled in a sufficiently creative fashion to qualify for copyright protection,” and that even if the defendants do hold a valid copyright, the “exercises” Miles and Aerin created do “not amount to an infringement of any such copyright of defendants.”
Judge’s Order
The case was assigned to Judge Stephen V. Wilson, and a couple of case conferences with the judge were conducted in early 2012. The second of these resulted in setting the date for a jury trial to begin on June 12, 2012. By late February 2012, however, Aerin and Miles filed a motion for summary judgment on their complaint and the counterclaims. A hearing on that motion resulted in an order that gave Aerin and Miles a win on virtually all of their legal arguments. Judge Wilson’s order granted Aerin and Miles’s summary judgment motion and made the following findings that were devastating for Cleargreen and Laugan’s claims of copyright and/or trademark protection.
Here were the judge’s findings:
1. The positions found in the publication of Magical Passes is in the public domain [i.e., not copyrightable].
2. The positions found in the video entitled Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity is in the public domain.
3. The positions found in the video Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity Volume 2 and 3 is in the public domain.
4. Cleargreen, Inc. does not own the copyrights to the publication of Magical Passes since the author was Carlos Castaneda and the copyrights were never transferred to Cleargreen, Inc.
5. Laugan Productions, Inc. does not own the copyrights to the publication of Magical Passes since the author was Carlos Castaneda and the copyrights were never transferred to Laugan Productions, Inc.
[Paragraphs 6 – 9. The same findings are made with respect to the copyrights in the Tensegrity videos.]
10. Plaintiff Aerin Alexander and Miles Reid’s teaching of the postures contained in the Magical Passes, Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity, Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity Volumes 2 and 3 . . . is a fair use and does not amount to either a copyright or trademark infringement.
11. Laugan Productions’ copyrights to Magical Passes, Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity, and Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity Volumes 2 and 3 are invalid.
12. Cleargreen, Inc.’s trademark “Tensegrity” is descriptive and without secondary meaning.
13. Cleargreen Inc. cannot enforce its trademark “Tensegrity”.
14. Laugan Productions cannot enforce its trademark “Tensegrity”.
15. Aerin Alexander and Miles Reid’s trademark “Being Energy” does not infringe on any trademark of either Cleargreen, Inc. or Laugan Productions, Inc.
16. Aerin Alexander and Miles Reid have not infringed on any trademark, or copyright of either Cleargreen, Inc. or Laugan Productions, Inc.
17. Aerin Alexander and Miles Reid’s reference to the term “Tensegrity” is a fair use.
18. Aerin Alexander and Miles Reid reference to the speeches they created stating their personal experiences and which were read at Tensegrity seminars is a fair use.
It is hard to see what was left of Cleargreen and Laugan’s counterclaim against the Being Energy duo following this judgment, but I don’t have a copy of the counterclaim that would help me determine that. The docket indicates there was still pre-trial preparation going on (exchanging of exhibit lists, witness lists and agreement on a joint exhibit list) prior to the June 12 trial date. Interestingly, Miles and Aerin’s proposed list of witnesses included a few former Cleargreen employees–Yelena Shor, Patricia Spinoza, Susana Tribe and Robert Savery, who they obviously thought were going to be supportive of their claims. It also called for cross examination of Muni Aranha, aka Carol Tiggs, as well as of Reni and Nyei. Cleargreen’s proposed witnesses included Margaret Nieto (formerly a member of the Sunday group and Cleargreen employee), Bruce Wagner, and Pablo Milberg (another former Sunday group member).
Cleargreen’s exhibit list filed back in February 2012 had included over 130 copyright applications covering various movements presented in workshops, speeches given in workshops, and videos of workshops from 1999-2008. The parties’ joint exhibit list filed May 14, 2012, listed 248 potential trial exhibits, including such intriguing items as “Employment Agreement dated July 12, 1995 between Carlos Castaneda and Laugan”; archival videos of Cleargreen workshops 1998-2008; a 1995 “script authored by Carlos Castaneda”; “Renata Murez notes regarding development of certain movement sequences”; Cleargreen payroll summaries for Miles Reid January 1996 through December 2005; Cleargreen payments to Miles Reid all transaction summaries 2000-2010; summary of payments to Aerin Alexander 2000-2010; Anthem Blue Cross billing summaries for the two plaintiffs; Miles’s Cleargreen American Express card statements; “Aerin job description”; and a number of emails from Reni, Miles and Aerin.
The Settlement
By mid-May 2012, however, the parties reached a settlement on whatever claims were still outstanding after the judge’s March 2012 order granting the plaintiffs’ summary judgment motion. The stipulation between the parties dismissing both sides’ remaining claims “with prejudice” [meaning they couldn’t refile them] and with the parties each bearing their own attorneys’ fees and costs, was filed May 17, 2012, effectively ending the case.
From a joint statement that briefly appeared online, we learned only that, “”Cleargreen, Inc. and Laugan Productions, Inc., who do business under the TENSEGRITY trademark, and Miles Reid and Aerin Alexander, who do business under the BEING ENERGY trademark, are pleased to announce jointly that they have reached a resolution of their legal dispute in a way that allows both parties to move forward as separate organizations each representing its own expression of the knowledge that derives from the same lineage.” (In other words, a giant win for Miles and Aerin!)
New Trademark Filing by Laugan
Following the dismissal of the case, in September 2012, Laugan Productions filed for trademark protection for something called “Theater of Infinity.” The “Goods and Services” description called for in the application reads: “ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES IN THE NATURE OF THEATER PRODUCTIONS AND MUSICAL, DANCE, AND MOVEMENT THEATER PRODUCTIONS; EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, NAMELY, CONDUCTING LIVE AND ON-LINE SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS IN THEATER, DANCE, MOVEMENT AND SELF-AWARENESS”. The application claims the first use of the term anywhere was August 27, 1997. There were amendments and lots of correspondence related to the application before it was finally entered on the register in November 2015.
I’m not sure what kind of protection Cleargreen, et al, think this trademark gave them with respect to later workshops, but I see they continue to use the term, along with a trademark symbol (just like they still use the registered trademark symbol next to the terms Tensegrity and Magical Passes), on their website.
For a July 2017 Cleargreen workshop at Omega in New York, part of their advertising “explained” what was described by the term as: “Through Theater of Infinity® and Tensegrity®—two contemporary expressions of the path with heart that Yaqui Indian seer don Juan Matus taught Carlos Castaneda—we engage in interactive theater imbued with movement and breath. Together we share discussions, meditations, group activities, journaling, ceremony, and guided individual and group dreaming practices. We explore the enhancing or limiting perspectives of gender we have internalized, along with gifts and challenges have we [sic] inherited from male and female lines.”
Maybe they just applied for it as a possible buttress against future upstart movement instructors since the judge in the Reid v. Cleargreen case had already found that Tensegrity™ and Magical Passes™ were no bar to Aerin and Miles teaching Tensegrity style movements on their own. But since Theater of Infinity’s description just sounds like more post-Castaneda New Agey nonsense, it’s hard to imagine who would want to infringe such inanity.
Being Energy
Meanwhile, Aerin and Miles did, for several years, deliver workshops, classes and online instruction under their Being Energy brand. Here’s a sample introductory video, dating back to 2012, featuring the two from their Being Energy YouTube channel:
By 2019, however, the couple had separated and have ultimately divorced. Miles has remained in Los Angeles where his acupuncture practice is, while Aerin, who now appears to be sole owner of the Being Energy brand and website, has relocated to Hilo, Hawaii.
Aerin Goes it Alone
Aerin’s LinkedIn bio describes her as the “creator and director of the Being Energy® methodology which [sic] purpose is to revitalize the human spirit through the practice of mindful breath and movement sequences. It aims at reorganizing the nervous and muscle skeletal systems to function in optimal ways, so the whole self can respond to daily challenges without loosing [sic] its integrity and regaining energy.”
The bio also lists Aerin’s training and credentials beyond the two years learning from Castaneda and 12 years or so as a Cleargreen instructor: “She holds a Masters in Exercise Physiology from the University of California, Northridge, a second Master in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica, California and several certifications, including Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner (GCFP), Sounder Sleep® Master Teacher and certified GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® teacher. She was trained in ancient Mexican shamanistic practices by Dr. Carlos Castaneda, and has been working to bridge the gap between shamanism and science for over 25 years. She has been leading Being Energy workshops in Europe, North and South America, Mexico, Russia and Asia. In the last thirteen years she has developed an online platform to reach students from all over the world.”
Miles Reid’s New Business
Miles’s new shingle is Energy Life Sciences Institute. There his credentials are summarized as follows: “Dr. Reid is a Medical Doctor from Argentina and holds degrees in Oriental Medicine as an Acupuncturist and Chinese Herbalist. A direct apprentice of Carlos Castaneda, he has also engaged in over 20 years of shamanic practices from ancient Mexico. Miles brings decades of study and experience in movement and consciousness to the services, classes and products offered by the Institute.” The website “About” page concludes with seven paragraphs devoted to explaining who Carlos Castaneda was.
Miles’s new website lists upcoming events, including a November 2024 workshop in Spanish in Mexico City entitled “Voladores of Infinity.” (Uh oh, infringing on Theater of Infinity® are we?) Besides offering the weekend workshop for $335 ($295 early bird special), “personalized treatments” from Dr. Miles are available for an additional charge during the hours the workshop isn’t being conducted. The site also indicates there are a “Practice” groups in about a dozen countries, and has a page devoted to the “First Annual Global Practice” that was held this past August via Zoom. The focus for that event was two sets of “Energy Passes”: The Sequence for Dreaming & The Jaguar of the Maya-Toltecs.
Prior to getting his new institute up and running, Miles made appearances at yoga and other new age health related workshops. For example, his topic for a 2019 lecture for the Center for Healthy Sex was “Sexual Energy: Our Life Force – Integrating Shamanism and Science.” Yup, reminds me exactly of Castaneda, who constantly told us to avoid engaging in sex so as to acquire enough energy for “dreaming” and entering the Second Attention. 😉
Given how moribund Cleargreen’s workshop activity is at this point, as described here, it appears Miles is full-on going for what’s left of the market, post-Castaneda, for ersatz “magical passes of the sorcerers of Ancient Mexico.” I can’t help but recall what Amy Wallace, who was briefly paired by Castaneda with Miles to try to convince her mother that she was getting married, wrote about him in Sorcerer’s Apprentice, where the pseudonym she gave him was “Dexter”:
“. . . Dexter, this peppy, self-confident newcomer, a pretty boy who was so narcissistic that the witches referred to him behind his back as ‘Antonio’ or ‘Mr. Teflon,’ because his self-centeredness made advice, insult, and teaching bounce right off him. . . . . Carlos observed, ‘Dexter is missing a few cards in his deck,’ tapping his own skull to demonstrate, then added fondly, ‘He reminds me of myself when I was young.'”
by Richard Jennings
