The framework of the debate on the rights of holders of traditional knowledge is polarized between the regulation established in the Agreement on the Commercial Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and the Convention on Biological Diversity, whose Ecuadorian counterpart is the Organic Code of Economy Social of the Knowledge that regulates the access, use and negotiation of the traditional knowledge of the ancestral peoples. It examines the effectiveness and coherence of this code with the right to selfdetermination through the analysis of three aspects: 1. The legal category «traditional knowledge associated with biodiversity» 2. The underlying economic paradigm 3. The locks that block the materialization of the prior consultation.