HealthNet (6)
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I would love to see the whole letter if you wouldn't mind forwarding
it to me at <hladd@usa.healthnet.org>
Your question to me was what attempts had we at SatelLife made to
settle our domain name dispute, because the Public relations man from
the HMO said that we rebuked their offers. Throughout this whole or-
deal we have tried to talk to the HMO, but they have refused to dis-
cuss this matter. Now that the case has been reported in the press,
they allege that it is us who have been blocking a settlement. Our
lawyers wrote to them and asked for a meeting between representative
of SatelLife and representatives of the HMO that they represented
back in early October. They replied that they (the HMO) were not
interested in meeting with us and told their lawyer to aggressively
pursue the case.
When our request for a meeting was rebuffed, we talked to a reporter
from the San Francisco Chronicle. That reporter called Phil Davis,
the General Counsel and Vice President of the parent company - Foun-
dation Health Systems. Mr. Davis was "outraged" (his words) and
called a Board member of ours - Mark Lediard to let him know that he
was angry that the press was involved. After an extremely abusive
diatribe from Mr. Davis, Mr. Davis told Mr. Lediard that if we would
turn over our name to them they might be willing to see if there was
anything they could do to help us. He made it very clear in that con-
versation that they had not yet paid anyone else for their domain
name and that they did not want to establish that precedent. However,
the parties agreed at the end of the call that Mr. Davis would call
his litigators (Attorney Bermen who is representing the HMO) and tell
them to withdraw the complaint with Network Solutions Inc. (which has
the job of policing domain names and which, procedurally would have
frozen our domain name - preventing us from using it until the dis-
pute was resolved) and instruct them to negotiate with us. He said
that we should move quickly to come to a resolution. However, when
our lawyers contacted Attorney Bermen they were told that they had
received no such instruction from Mr. Davis and in fact were told
quite the opposite and would continue to press their case. The defi-
nition of setting according to them is that we hand over the name
HealthNet and healthnet.org - period. Not exactly a compromise.
We then offered to put a disclaimer on our site so that if folks got
to us by mistake they would be directed back to the HMO and so the
general public would not mistakenly conclude that the HMO was in any-
way related to or supporting our organization (such association, they
have alleged, damages them). They refused that offer.
They have made no offer to settle this case. They have communicated
no willingness to settle this case to either our lawyers or to me.
They have in fact just this morning in the newspaper suggested that a
settlement of this case could be that we change our name, and they
are even suggesting new names for us!
They are not interested in the work we do and do not care about the
impact of the name change on those of you in other countries.
Thank you for asking and for giving me a chance to clarify the go-
ings-on!
Sincerely,
Holly Ladd
SatelLife
mailto:hladd@usa.healthnet.org
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