The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation amended its lawsuit Monday against Geron Corporation, a California-based company, in an attempt to secure broad access for the pharmaceutical, medical, scientific, research and developmental communities to the stem-cell research products to which the corporation asserts it has exclusive rights.
According to a press release, the amended lawsuit seeks to have the court declare that Geron has 'no exclusive rights to Research Products except in those cases when Geron added any propriety, patented technology owned by Geron.' Carl Gulbrandsen, WARF's managing director, said it was important that WARF be able to license Research Products on a nonexclusive basis. Geron Corp. was a major financial supporter of the work of James Thomson, the UW-Madison developmental biologist who first successfully isolated human embryonic stem cells in 1998.
