The protection of traditional culture of indigenous ethnic groups through the mechanisms of intellectual property rights is now prevalent in the world practice. Many countries strive to establish national law systems to protect their traditional knowledge and cultu ral expressions from misappropriation or misuse. The integration of those systems at the international level is provided by the World Intellectual Property organization, WIPo. In russia, this problem is considered in the context of cultural heritage preservation. Traditional culture in this case is understood as an object of intellectual property rights, owned by its native holders. In this sense, the task of identification and description of the objects of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions has its own specifics. There is proposed a series of practical activities to determine the potential of deve lopment of the traditional knowledge and cultural expressions protection system in russia.