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As a follow up to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2002, the Peruvian government set up a legal database of the collective knowledge of indigenous peoples associated with biological resources. In the context of intellectual property rights protection, this knowledge is conceived as a tool the State and indigenous peoples can mobilise for economic development. In describing the legal construction and implementation of this database, this article shows the peculiarities of an original regulation moving towards a process of nationalisation of traditional knowledge in which indigenous peoples only take a marginal part. In the absence of economic benefits for now, this database has a symbolic effectiveness for the protection and exploitation of traditional knowledge through intellectual property rights.