Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, EMPLOYEE STATUS—N.D. Ill.: Chicago news rivals split wins in bitter copyright showdown, (Jun 25, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

A split-off new company owns the videos at issue, but the use of one of them was fair.

Two news producers who split off from their media company and formed a different news outlet were the lawful owners of four news videos they produced before their departure because they were not employees of the original company at the time the works were filmed, the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has held. But the court, in adjudicating a bitter dispute between two Chicago news rivals, found that the original company made a fair use of one of the videos by excerpting it as part of a news report about the rivalry (Chicago Corner, LLC v. Hard Lens Media, Inc., No. 1:24-cv-00246 (N.D. Ill. June 22, 2026)).

The lawsuit revolves around a YouTube news channel called Chicago Corner. The show was created in 2019 by Hard Lens Media, a social media news organization that reports on local news in the Chicagoland area. But in 2023 several people affiliated with Hard Lens split off and created a separate company, Chicago Corner LLC. The two companies then found themselves in a dispute over several news videos produced for Hard Lens between 2021 and 2023.

The dispute soon turned to litigation. Chicago Corner sued Hard Lens in 2024 over the news videos with claims for copyright infringement, accounting, and declaratory relief. Hard Lens, in turn, counterclaimed against Chicago Corner and one of its members, seeking declaratory judgment and tortious interference with business. The court dismissed that claim in 2025, leaving only Chicago Corner’s lawsuit to resolve.

Both parties moved for summary judgment on the Chicago Corner lawsuit, leading to this opinion.

Works for hire. The court found that the videos were owned by Chicago Corner and not Hard Lens Media. The videos had been created by two producers, Jerry Vasilatos and Edward Heller, who were affiliated at the time with Hard Lens. When those two producers left Hard Lens to form Chicago Corner, they claimed that the rights to those videos came with them. Hard Lens, by contrast, claimed that the producers behind the shows had created them as works for hire for Hard Lens—meaning that Hard Lens, not the new company, owned the rights. The court disagreed.

The two producers did not create the videos as works for hire, the court found, because they were not employees of Hard Lens at the time. Under the doctrine of Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989), the court noted, work-for-hire claims are analyzed under the multi-factor test of the general common law of agency. Most of those factors weighed against a work-for-hire relationship here, the court found. To be sure, the court noted, the two producers worked with Hard Lens and produced content for Chicago Corner for over two years. But critically, the court noted, they had “complete control over the manner and means of producing the at-issue videos as well as deciding what videos to produce.” Equally importantly, the court noted, Hard Lens neither provided employee benefits to—nor withheld taxes from—the two producers. In addition, the court noted, the two “controlled the logistics of their work: neither had fixed hours and they could work from where they chose.” Therefore, the court concluded, Hard Lens was not an author of the videos by virtue of “work for hire” provisions of the Copyright Act.

Joint authors. Nor was Hard Lens a joint author of the videos, the court found. Hard Lens argued that its own owners, Kit Cabello and Daniel Luepker, had jointly created the videos with the two departing producers. The court disagreed. A joint work, the court noted, requires (1) intent to create a joint work; and (2) contribution of independently copyrightable material. But Hard Lens showed no evidence that it met either standard. There was no contemporaneous evidence that Vasilatos and Heller intended to be joint authors with Hard Lens at the time the first three at-issue videos were created, the court noted. Nor could a reasonable jury conclude that anyone other than Vasilatos or Heller “contributed any independently copyrightable material,” the court noted. Indeed, Hard Lens submitted no evidence that its owners contributed “even ideas or suggestions, which alone would be insufficient,” the court noted.

Retroactive assignments. The court also found that Vasilatos and Heller validly assigned their copyrights in the works to Chicago Corner. To be sure, the two departing producers originally registered their works as works for hire for Chicago Corner rather than as an assignment to Chicago Corner. Moreover, the court noted, the producers did not make written assignments to their new company—as required by Section 204 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 204(a), until after the litigation began. But neither of those facts undermined the transfers, the court found. The clear intent of the parties at the time Chicago Corner was formed, the court noted, was that the two producers were assigning their works to the production company. Thus, the fact that the retroactive written assignments only came later was legitimate because it merely codified an earlier oral agreement. As to the work-for-hire registration, the court found, precedents taught that kind of error “was not fatal” as long as the intent of the registering party was to actually make an assignment rather than treat it as a work for hire.

In any event, the court noted, Hard Lens did not have standing to challenge the assignment anyway. Although Section 204 of the Copyright Act requires a written assignment, courts have noted, that provision is only in place to protect copyright owners from individuals mistakenly or fraudulently claiming oral licenses or copyright ownership]. “Where there is no dispute between the copyright owner and the transferee about the status of the copyright,” the court noted, “it would be unusual and unwarranted to permit a third-party infringer to invoke section 204(a) to avoid suit.”

Fair use. Although the court found that Chicago Corner owned all of the videos, it found that Hard Lens was excused for its use of one of them. Hard Lens incorporated a five minute portion of one of the disputed videos in an exposé-style report on Chicago Corner itself. The purpose of the video “was to critique not only the content of the [Chicago Corner] video,” the court noted, “but to discuss the deteriorating business relationship between the parties, including their legal challenges.” That Hard Lens did not “analyze or comment on the news reporting, editing, visuals, narrative structure, or expressive content of [Chicago Corner’s] work,” the court emphasized, “does not mean the work is not a critique.” Moreover, the court noted, Hard Lens excerpted only five minutes from a nearly three-hour video and its video was not a substitute for the original. The use was fair, the court concluded.

The Case is No. 1:24-cv-00246.

Judge: Rowland, M.

Attorneys: Catherine S. Hareas for the Chicago Corner, LLC. Carla Carter (Davis & Carter) for Hard Lens Media, Inc.

Companies: Chicago Corner, LLC; Hard Lens Media, Inc.

Cases: EmployeeStatus TortClaims IllinoisNews