Informed consent is IP protection for indigenous communities.
Nwankwo and Kenny 21 (Ugonma and Charles, Center for Global Development, “Their Knowledge, Their Rights: Using Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Property to Protect Communities,” March 1, https://www.cgdev.org/blog/their-knowledge-their-rights-using-traditional-knowledge-and-intellectual-property)
Beyond documentation, Indigenous and local communities to whom traditional knowledge belongs should be the primary custodians of this knowledge: for example, if a spin-off innovation that utilizes traditional knowledge is deemed patentable or a creative work generated by communities can be copyrighted, it should be the choice of community representatives to use and benefit from the resulting IP protection (or refuse use of the traditional knowledge in particular innovations or publications). National traditional knowledge systems should include legal support for communities to make and enforce those decisions. This will help to mitigate some of the inherent power imbalances that conversations around traditional knowledge present.
There remain practical, legal, and ethical challenges to consider. The principle should be clear, however: If traditional knowledge is placed outside the public domain and into the IP system, the choice to do so should be made by the community that created it—and any benefits that accrue should flow back to that community.