Abstract: In late 2006 the DKCRC Indigenous Intellectual Property Protocol was subject to a revision exercise. This revision raises a number of critical issues that go to the heart of the nature of collaborative research and ethical practice. The revision process for the Protocol was a collaborative one, in which several different kinds of discourse occurred. These discourses necessitated preliminary preparation, in order to facilitate shared understandings among workshop participants of specialised language and concepts pertaining to intellectual property, and to international legal discourse. This paper will explore some of the challenges and issues in the process of developing these shared understandings.