{"id":255345,"date":"2026-05-02T12:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T12:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/255345\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T12:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T12:26:09","slug":"flvs-must-rivals-fees-after-spending-millions-losing-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/255345\/","title":{"rendered":"FLVS must rival’s fees after spending millions, losing case"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Florida Virtual School relentlessly pursued a lawsuit against a private competitor<\/a> in \u201cbad faith,\u201d a federal judge has ruled, censuring the state-funded institution that spent millions of taxpayer dollars on a case with \u201cno evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Gregory Presnell said in April order that as a result the Orlando-based virtual school and its attorneys will have to pay the company it sued, Stride, Inc., a yet-to-be-determined portion of what it spent to defend itself against the virtual school\u2019s years-long lawsuit over trademark infringement.<\/p>\n

Stride is a private online education company based in Virginia.<\/p>\n

Presnell in his April 9 order rebuked Florida Virtual School for its pursuit of nationwide damages, writing that its lawyers had presented no proof that the school had suffered financial harm, an essential element of trademark infringement cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trouble for plaintiff is that it was never the \u2018innocent party,’\u201d said Presnell in the signed order.\u00a0 \u201cThis court warned plaintiff at every step that it was pursuing claims for which it had presented no evidence of damages or harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Florida Virtual School, often known as FLVS, is a national pioneer in online education. It sued Stride in a trademark infringement case in 2020, claiming $6 billion in damages. The public school took issue with Stride\u2019s partnership with a small Florida school district to provide online classes and the logos and website used to market that effort.<\/p>\n

FLVS lost the suit, which it filed in 2020, two years ago. At that time, the school said it had spent more than $2 million pursuing the lawsuit, hiring four outside law firms to fight the case. Its legal bills likely have swelled since then since it unsuccessfully appealed the 2024 decision.<\/p>\n

The school did not answer a question from the Orlando Sentinel about how much money it had spent during the past two years but Friday sent a general statement about the litigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an educational institution, we have a duty to protect students and our organization, and we take trademark infringement very seriously,\u201d an unnamed spokesperson for the school said in an emailed statement. \u201cProtecting our brand is critical to ensuring that our students and families can clearly distinguish between the school choice options available to them so they can choose a school that best fits their child\u2019s needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an earlier ruling on the case two years ago, Presnell called the school\u2019s claims \u201cfeeble.\u201d But FLVS appealed that ruling, dragging out the litigation for another two years, and hiring additional lawyers, in what the court called \u201ca marathon trademark dispute.\u201d An appeals court ruled against FLVS in January.<\/p>\n

In addition to Presnell\u2019s latest order sanctioning FLVS and its attorneys for its unsubstantiated claims of confusion in other states, Stride is asking the court to require FLVS to reimburse the private competitor for the money it spent on attorneys\u2019 fees and other costs related to other aspects of the suit. Stride estimates that tab is nearly $6 million. The judge has not yet decided whether FLVS should have to pay those expenses.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for Stride say FLVS should have known its claims were baseless when it first filed its lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cFLVS\u2019s claims were exceptionally weak from the outset, yet FLVS was afforded ample opportunity over three years in extensive litigation and discovery to substantiate its sweeping allegations of considerable consumer confusion and deception and alleged damages,\u201d Stride\u2019s attorneys wrote to the court in the April 27 filing seeking reimbursement for legal fees and other costs of defending the company against the virtual school\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the company is \u201cpleased to put this matter behind us,\u201d according to a statement provided by one of Stride\u2019s attorneys.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court\u2019s ruling confirms what we believed from the outset: there was no basis for this claim and no evidence of harm,\u201d said the statement from attorney Steven Hollman.<\/p>\n

The school employed more than a dozen different attorneys throughout the course of the case. Presnell\u2019s order outlining the sanctions against FLVS and its attorneys noted that \u201crevolving door\u201d of representation and said most of the attorneys involved bore some responsibility for their \u201cbad faith pursuit\u201d of the case.<\/p>\n

FLVS serves more than 240,000 students, most of them using it as a part-time option, and receives more than $311 million in state taxpayer money annually.<\/p>\n

The suit filed in late 2020 marked the second time FLVS went after Stride, then known as K12. The public school won its first lawsuit against K12, settling with the private company in 2015, and as a result, K12 had to stop marketing its Florida Virtual Academy\/Program and its acronym FLVA\/P, which the public virtual school said was too similar to its name and FLVS acronym.<\/p>\n

The virtual school said it sued a second time because it thought K12 breached the earlier agreement by starting a virtual program called the Florida Online School in 2019 with the 13,000-student Hendry County school district in southwest Florida. The suit noted K12 was advertising \u201cFlorida virtual schooling\u201d on its website and using a blue color scheme similar to the public virtual school\u2019s on its website.<\/p>\n

Presnell ruled in Stride\u2019s favor in January 2024. <\/a>He described the virtual school\u2019s claims as weak in his order and wrote that the online school had presented \u201cno credible evidence\u201d that K12 infringed on its trademarks or confused families looking for virtual classes, as suit alleged.<\/p>\n

Instead, Florida\u2019s virtual school\u00a0 behaved like a \u201ctrademark bully\u201d in pursuing the case, he added.<\/a><\/p>\n

The judge said the logos of the two schools were different and both names were generic, using terms any parent would search for if looking for online classes for their children.<\/p>\n

K12 is not the only rival that has been caught in FLVS\u2019s crosshairs. In 2018, FLVS also sued Arizona State University, and an affiliated online school, claiming trademark infringement. That case was resolved the following year outside of court, and both parties asked the court to dismiss the case, with each school paying its own legal costs and attorneys\u2019 fees.<\/p>\n

anmartin@orlandosentinel.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida Virtual School relentlessly pursued a lawsuit against a private competitor in \u201cbad faith,\u201d a federal judge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[113,114,266,115,139,141,140,109],"class_list":["post-255345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}