Interesting evidence of the uneven accumulation of capital promoting the uneven accumulation of intellectual capital.
This appears to be a particularly intense form of the general pattern that capital wants a more sophisticated workforce in the imperialist heartlands, and this trend allows it to make more surplus profits than it would by distributing itself rapidly and evenly across the globe, investing in the very cheapest labour it can find. It does that too of course, but the countervailing tendency to try to extract surplus value from a workforce with a "higher cultural level" prevails on a global level.
Then, having amassed the intellectual variable capital, it champions the treatment of intellectual property rights as a commodity that should have free passage across the globe, without any restrictive practices to hinder its increasing domination of economic life.
Chris Burford
Ldonon