ICC has actively monitored developments involving Inuit intellectual property rights including traditional knowledge, innovations and practices (TKIP), and cultural expressions and folklore, via regular participation in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC). The committee has begun negotiating a set of policy objectives and core principles in an effort to create an intellectual property regime for TKIP that may lead to a modification of existing patent, copyright and trademark procedures for TKIP and the derivatives thereof.

As TKIP and community held genetic resources do not neatly fall into standard patent procedures, they are difficult to integrate into traditional intellectual property regimes, and new norms have been discussed at the IGC that may allow for communal and permanent ownership of this special intellectual property.