A new law gives ownership of patents—documents providing exclusive rig

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

Evaluation of a Plan

Situation Universities own the patents resulting from government-sponsored research at their institutions. One university plans to sell its patents to corporations to fund a program to improve teaching.

Reasoning Which point casts doubt on the university's plan? The university's plan assumes there will be a market for its patents, and that the corporations will want to buy them. What might make this untrue? If some of the corporations have already done the same or similar research, they will not be prospective buyers of the university's patents.


(A) Profit-making corporations interested in developing products based on patents held by universities are likely to try to serve as exclusive sponsors of ongoing university research projects.
This point is irrelevant to the plan to sell patents in order to fund a program.


(B) Corporate sponsors of research in university facilities are entitled to tax credits under new federal tax-code guidelines.
The university plans to sell the patents to the corporations, not to invite the corporations to sponsor research.


(C) Research scientists at Logos University have few or no teaching responsibilities and participate little if at all in the undergraduate programs in their field.
This point is irrelevant to the university's plan to sell off patents since the plan does not specify that the research scientists will be involved in the programs to improve undergraduate teaching.


(D) Government-sponsored research conducted at Logos University for the most part duplicates research already completed by several profit-making corporations.
Correct. This statement properly identifies a factor that casts doubt on the university's plan to sell its patents to corporations.


(E) Logos University is unlikely to attract corporate sponsorship of its scientific research.
The plan concerns selling patents resulting from government-sponsored research, not attracting corporate sponsorship for research.


Answer: D.

Whenever I looked at this problem I thought along the lines of, what would make the university not able to allocate funds towards undergraduate programs by not selling their patents.

I eliminated answer D last because it said that a lot of the research they perform is just a duplicate of work performed and completed by for-profit corporations. If it is duplicate research then they would never be awarded a patent which means that this option is irrelevant to the question. All this option states is that most of their research won't result in a patent which is 100% irrelevant (in my mind) to the argument.

I selected A because if the corporations are only willing to allocate their money as a sponsorship and not as outright buying the patents for cash, then the school would not be able to allocate money to their undergraduate program. All you would have is the government and corporations sponsoring additional research but that would not translate in to more money for undergraduate studies.

A new law gives ownership of patents—documents providing exclusive right to make and sell an invention—to universities, not the government, when those patents result from government-sponsored university research. Administrators at Logos University plan to sell any patents they acquire to corporations in order to fund programs to improve undergraduate teaching.

Which of the following, if true, would cast most doubt on the viability of the college administrators’ plan described above?

(A) Profit-making corporations interested in developing products based on patents held by universities are likely to try to serve as exclusive sponsors of ongoing university research projects.

(B) Corporate sponsors of research in university facilities are entitled to tax credits under new federal tax-code guidelines.

(C) Research scientists at Logos University have few or no teaching responsibilities and participate little if at all in the undergraduate programs in their field.

(D) Government-sponsored research conducted at Logos University for the most part duplicates research already completed by several profit-making corporations.

(E) Logos University is unlikely to attract corporate sponsorship of its scientific research.

The question asks us to cast doubt on the viability of a plan, so the heart of the argument will be that plan itself.

What is the plan? Administrators at Logos university plan to sell any patents they acquire to corporations, and then to use that money to fund improvements in undergraduate teaching.

We get some additional facts about the patents that will be sold: they "result from government-sponsored university research," and a new law is responsible for allowing the universities to own the patents.

With all of that in mind, use POE to cast doubt on the administrators' plan. Which answer choice hints that selling these patents isn't a great way to fund improvements in undergraduate teaching?

(A) misses the mark. The administrators' goal is to fund one thing in particular: "programs to improve undergraduate teaching." (A) implies that corporations serve another function: they sponsor ongoing university research products. These functions aren't necessarily at odds -- it's possible for administrators to sell patents to corporations, use that money to fund undergraduate teaching improvements, AND get sponsored for further research. Seems like a pretty good deal, and the administrators' plan makes sense!

Eliminate (A).


(B) tells us about an incentive for corporations to sponsor research at universities.

That's nice, but what does it have to do with the administrators' plan? It really doesn't have an impact at all. The plan is to sell patents from government-sponsored research to corporations. (B) talks about another kind of research altogether -- corporate-sponsored research. If (B) is true, it doesn't cast doubt on the plan to sell patents to corporations.

(B) is out.


The plan calls for the funds from selling patents to go toward undergraduate teaching, but there's no need for the research scientists themselves to be involved with undergraduate students. The plan would work just as well if those exact researchers had nothing to do with undergraduate programs.

Eliminate (C).


The plan is to sell patents resulting from government-sponsored research. But how many such patents will Logos University actually get? And how valuable would those patents really be?

(D) tells us that the university might not even get that many patents. After all, if several profit-making corporations have already done the same research, surely those companies would have patented any cool new inventions that came of that research. And if the patents are still up for grabs, then that must mean that other for-profit companies already decided the inventions weren't that valuable.

If Logos University can only expect a few crappy patents from the new law, then selling these patents won't provide many funds for undergraduate teaching.

(D) casts doubt on the viability of the plan, so keep (D).


Again, the new law talks about government-sponsored research, not corporate-sponsored research. (E) doesn't tell us anything about whether the administrators' plan to sell patents from government-sponsored research will succeed.

(E) is out, and (D) is the correct answer.

I hope that helps!