This paper makes an ethnographic contribution to the recent debates surrounding Intellectual Property. Using detailed material, it shows how intellectual resources are part of the wider whole that make up the viability of named places and kin groups among Nekgini speakers (Papua New Guinea). Identity and ownership are bound up with control over owned knowledge. This is complicated by the fact that rights to intellectual resources there do not reside in individuals, nor in simple collectivities. Some points are drawn from this ethnography to relate it to other writings on IPR, particularly those published in Social Anthropology. Comment is made on the consequences of advocating IPR, with its ultimate referent in the individual, in such situations