Sentence reduction law spurs underground market in prisoner patents

A Chinese law granting inmates who patent new technologies eligibility for sentence reductions has provided fertile soil for the growth of an underground market selling patents to prisoners, The New York Times reported, citing local media. Reporters with the Beijing Youth Daily contacted services that claimed to procure patents for a fee, with prices at one office in Shaanxi province ranging from RMB6,800 (about US$1,100) to some worth nearly $10,000. “We’ve never run into this situation,” a prison official in Tianjin told the newspaper. “But according to the regulations it definitely has to be one’s own invention.”