This question is asking us what both passages either explicitly say or strongly imply. Answer choice C tells us that patent authorities no longer consider the distinction between discoveries and inventions to be clear cut.
This statement is pretty directly supported by the second passage. Line 50 and on basically tell us that this is the case, so we then must determine if the first passage would also support this statement. The first passage only mentions patents in passing, near the very end. More importantly, we know nothing about patent authorities from the first passage. While we might be able to extrapolate that if patents are being granted then perhaps patent authorities are becoming more lax, this is quite a stretch.
Furthermore, the first passage does not note a distinction between discoveries and inventions. This is purely in the second paragraph, and the first paragraph really only seems to be talking about research in a general sense. For both of these reasons, we cannot say that the first passage provides any support for C.
Note that the author of The first passage might agree with C, but this does not matter for this question. While C is directionally in alignment with the first passage, there is no textual support.
