Nan Yong, former vice-chairman of the Chinese Football Association and director of the Football Management Center, General Administration of Sports of China, was in Dec granted a reduction of one year on his ten-and-a-half-year sentence for patenting four inventions. June 13, 2012.[Photo/IC]

Online agencies who sell patent rights of inventions pave a possible way for prisoners to commute their sentence, but the legitimacy of the practice is still vague, the Beijing Youth Daily reported on Monday.

According to the criminal law in China, the punishment shall be commuted if an inmate has inventions or important technical innovations to his credit.

Cases of ex-officials behind bars making invention to earn commutation have recently made headlines.

Nan Yong, the former vice-chairman of the Chinese Football Association and Director of Football Management Center, General Administration of Sport of China, was granted in Dec a reduction of one year from his ten and half year terms of sentence, for patenting four inventions.

It is believed that when a prisoner makes an invention, he can entrust an intellectual property agency to apply for a patent. But some agencies transcend their business scope by offering special services.

Tailored inventions to suit prisoners

Some intellectual property agencies publicize on their website that they can provide tailored inventions and patents to fit different sentences in different prisons to help prisoners reduce prison term.

A manager of such an agency based in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, surnamed Liu, said he could develop an invention solution based on customer’s gender, education background, occupation, interests and specialties to make the invention more convincible for commutation.

The price of an invention ranges from 6,800 yuan ($1,094) to 60,000 yuan according to its development period and commutation effect, Liu said.

But he also points out that "different prisons have different rules". He needs to know the specific rules on commutation in the first place.