Who owns Aikido? Now and then, even our small Aikido world is touched by copyright issues.

It happens. Sometimes, a poster design is copied. A slogan is borrowed. An article or publication is used without proper citation.

Sometimes, the content is explicitly protected by copyright, and good faith isn’t enough to justify the use of someone else’s work without permission. Our blog knows something about that (being a registered trademark itself), as we’ve had to face some European legal firms over the years. Once for using a picture labeled royalty-free that was actually owned by a Spanish reporter. Another time because a major hotel chain thought our brand name was in direct competition with their business…

Publishing and interacting with an audience also means navigating a sea of rules designed to protect the effort and rights of those who create original content-and of those who try to make a living from it.

Whether one can live off Aikido is debatable. Perhaps, if you’re good, you can live also thanks to Aikido.

One thing is certain: several institutions exist because Aikido exists. National organizations that sponsor it make sense because the discipline exists-along with its values, its teachers, and its practitioners.

One could also say the opposite: Aikido exists because someone, nearly sixty years after the founder’s death, has consistently worked to spread it.

This has led to a considerable body of editorial and multimedia contributions, which has grown exponentially with the rise of digital technologies.

Over a few decades, we’ve seen a significant accumulation of technical and educational expertise-through classes, seminars, schools, and events. Around all this “practice” is a galaxy of editorial and multimedia works, mostly self-produced and self-published. An explosive mix of intangible assets and what copyright law defines as “intellectual works.”

So, who owns Aikido?

It’s easy to say that for Morihei Ueshiba, Aikido was a legacy to make humanity “one family.” Easy-and true. But humans are wonderfully… complex beings.

There’s a soft copyright, embodied in Aikikai’s immense work of dissemination, managed through the Ueshiba family’s lineage. First Kisshomaru, now Moriteru, and likely Mitsuteru soon-a lineage that, while unofficial, is widely accepted by the global community… Except perhaps by those who, though once considered “guardians of tradition,” felt excluded from this vision and responded with a parallel, equally soft, lineage-based copyright.

So, from the start, that Aikido meant to create one family became, in the name of copyright, a wonderful example of fragmentation-even in Iwama, where two neighboring dojos pretend the other doesn’t exist.

There’s also a stricter copyright, related to published works-preventing people from photocopying and selling “The Art of Peace” or “Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere.” This protects not only modest profits but the integrity of these works for correct use.

Then there’s a fluid copyright, arising from the intersection of habits and rules -defining how teaching and practice are organized. Practitioners identify themselves with their dojo, and dojos identify with their national organizations. A sense of belonging which -too often- mirrors the loyalty of samurai to their lords centuries ago, now applied to legal structures.

This copyright is rarely explicit-except through the regulations that govern Aikido practice under various national sports entities.

Many small worlds, each struggling to survive bureaucracy and their own limits.

Worlds that, when faced with the challenge of real collaboration -beyond the yearly “We’re all Aiki-friends” seminar- are both drawn to the source and entangled in rules meant to replace what practice alone failed to define. And often tempted to choose the safety of current structures over the unknown of change, clinging to the phrase “this is how we do it.”

Faced with this blurred reality, who does Aikido really belong to? Everyone-but with rights, real or imagined, that limit access to a broader public.

And here lies the paradox: anyone who takes on the responsibility to teach and promote this art does so not for money, but out of belief that people out there would benefit from it. So, all of us-under any umbrella-come from the same source and have the same mission.

Is it really about a poster, a trademark, a book, a clip, a rank, or a title that we defend through copyright? Or is it simply a matter of misdirected pride -something every discipline and spiritual tradition has always tried to help us overcome?

Disclaimer Picture by Victoria from Pixabay