Item 8.01 Other Events.

On November 27, 2008, Geron Corporation (the "Company") announced that the Enlarged Board of Appeals of the European Patent Office (EPO) has issued a decision in case G0002/06, which was an appeal by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) against the rejection of claims in WARF's European Patent Application No. 96903521.1. The claims of the application pertain to the first isolation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) by Dr. James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin. The Company holds a worldwide license under this patent family.

The decision upholds the rejection of WARF's claims as being impermissible under a rule of the European Patent Convention that prohibits the patenting of inventions which concern "the uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes." In reaching its decision, the Enlarged Board of Appeals emphasized the fact that at the time that the priority patent application was filed (in 1995), the only method of obtaining hESCs, as described in the application, required the use of a human embryo. Following Thomson's discovery, many hESC lines have become widely available through stem cell banks, obviating the need for researchers to culture the cells from embryonic material. The applicability of this decision to such lines is uncertain.