PATENTS In/Sight
Gansu Province in north-central China has developed a novel (the pun sort of happened on its own) coordination between its Intellectual Property Office and the Bureau of Prison Administration. The Prison Administration is offering sentence remissions to prisoners making “inventions or major technological renovations”.
For some reason, this was followed by an upsurge in patent filings by prisoners in Gansu. To meet the demand, the Gansu IP Office has dispatched senior patent practitioners and government officials to help prisoners with their patent applications.
Perhaps there will now be a wealth of expertise available at the Gansu patent office on tunneling techniques, contraband concealment, cutlery sharpening, lock picking, and other useful arts.
For those who debate whether patents actually provide any incentive to invention, or invention disclosure, here is grist for the mill. And maybe there is a spark of creative thinking among the bureaucrats of centrally planned economies after all.
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