DataCom, a company that filed many patents last year, was financially

DataCom, a company that filed many patents last year, was financially more successful last year than were its competitors, none of which filed many patents. It is therefore likely that DataCom owed its greater financial success to the fact that it filed many patents last year.

The argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it

(A) presupposes what it sets out to demonstrate about the relationship between the financial success of DataCom’s competitors and the number of patents they filed

(B) confused a company’s financial success with its technological innovativeness

(C) fails to establish whether any one of DataCom’s competitors was financially more successful last year than was any other

(D) gives no reason to exclude the possibility that other differences between DataCom and its competitors accounted for its comparative financial success

(E) applies a generalization to an exceptional case