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Can someone please explain this

The question asks us to strengthen the automobile industry rep's argument and weaken the critic's conclusion. In other words we need to say that the duration of protection of patents needs to be increased from the current duration of 20 years.

A. The heavy electrical industry, which has development costs comparable to those in the automobile industry, has not seen new innovations in recent years.
This does not tell us about the revenue of the heavy electrical industry, hence insufficient to arrive at a conclusion. Wrong option.

B. Automobile companies are legally permitted to bring to market alternative innovations that are sufficiently dissimilar to the patented innovation.
This actually weakens the automobile industry rep's argument. Since if automobile companies are allowed to market alternative innovations, they could boost their revenue and cover for the R&D costs, thereby reducing the need for extending patent protection. Wrong option.

C. Many recent industrial innovations have happened in products, for example, in the computer and electronics industries, for which patent protection is often very ineffective. Although this option tells us that patent protection is ineffective, it does not tell us that the reason for the same is that the duration of the patent protection is inadequate. Wrong option.

D. Beta testing of the automobile innovation, which occur after the patent is granted and before the new innovation can be marketed, often takes as many as 10 years to complete. Since total patent protection is 20 years, and beta testing takes away 10 years, companies are only left with 10 years to sell their products. Effectively reducing their total time of earning revenue by half. Hence this option calls for an increase in the duration of patent protection. Correct option.

E. There are several industries with much innovation in which the ratio of research and development costs to revenues is higher than it is in the automobile industry. This actually weakens the automobile industry rep's argument. By stating that many industries have lots of innovation even with a higher ratio of R&D costs to revenue than the automobile industry. Wrong option.
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