Critical Reasoning

Stronger patent laws are needed to protect inventions from being pirated. With that protection, manufacturers would be encouraged to invest in the development of new products and technologies. Such investment frequently results in an increase in a manufacturer's productivity.
Which of the following conclusions can most properly be drawn from the information above?

(A) Stronger patent laws tend to benefit financial institutions as well as manufacturers.
(B) Increased productivity in manufacturing is likely to be accompanied by the creation of more manufacturing jobs.
(C) Manufacturers will decrease investment in the development of new products and technologies unless there are stronger patent laws.
(D) The weakness of current patent laws has been a cause of economic recession.
(E) Stronger patent laws would stimulate improvements in productivity for many manufacturers

imo E

Only C and E seem to be the contender here. I will go with E as well.
C says "Manufacturers will decrease investment.." but that is not mentioned in the argument. Argument only says that patent laws would encourage Manufacturers. C is trying to extrapolate this logic.
OA ?

saurabhmahajan wrote:Stronger patent laws are needed to protect inventions from being pirated. With that protection, manufacturers would be encouraged to invest in the development of new products and technologies. Such investment frequently results in an increase in a manufacturer's productivity.
Which of the following conclusions can most properly be drawn from the information above?

(A) Stronger patent laws tend to benefit financial institutions as well as manufacturers.
(B) Increased productivity in manufacturing is likely to be accompanied by the creation of more manufacturing jobs.
(C) Manufacturers will decrease investment in the development of new products and technologies unless there are stronger patent laws.
(D) The weakness of current patent laws has been a cause of economic recession.
(E) Stronger patent laws would stimulate improvements in productivity for many manufacturers

IMO C.

E is a case of extreme inference. How can we say "many manufacturer ". Argument is just saying that stronger laws can increase a manufacturer's productivity....this is just a generalization.

Whereas C is just a mirror image of the argument.
Manufacturer will not decrease the investment------> stronger patent laws.
Manufacturer would be encouraged to invest-----stronger patent laws.

FightWithGMAT wrote:
E is a case of extreme inference. How can we say "many manufacturer ". Argument is just saying that stronger laws can increase a manufacturer's productivity....this is just a generalization.

That's the grammatically correct way of framing the sentence. Plus, read the 2nd sentence again - With that protection, manufacturers would be encouraged to invest in the development of new products and technologies. The plural form is used here.

C is not right - There is no mention of decrease but only increased investments. So if there are no stronger patent laws, investment may also remain constant - or as it is today. There is no mention it will be lower than what it is today and we cannot assume that there is going to be a decrease

So what's the right OA?

KP