analysis of the relation of copyright and work content in judicial verdicts of usa, uk and canada

according to copyright system, the normal standard for protecting literary and artistic works is originality. hence, the international copyright treaties such as berne convention, while emphasizing on originality, avoid imposing other mandatory standards for protecting such works. however, these works are different forms of expression of various ideas and accordingly, comprise different contents. in some cases, the works contents are inconsistent with religious and national values and norms or society custom and laws. there are conflicts between protecting copyright as an intellectual property right and other moral, religious and legal priorities in the society. to resolve this conflict and answer the question whether work content will affect copyright protection, countries have adopted different approaches. from the perspective of the work content, this article through a comparative study of approaches and judicial verdicts of the usa, the uk and canada, infers two general views: the work content does not have any impacts on copyright protection and the work content have impacts on copyright protection. in addition, some supporters of the second view believe in content impact on existence of copyright in a work and other supporters believe that content has impacts on some enforcements of copyright.