Abstract: Taking 2007-2016 Chinese A-share listed companies as samples, this paper conducts a test of the impact and the mechanism of the media attention on the quality of corporate patents with the quality data of company patents manually collected by the knowledge width method. The findings show that media attention can significantly reduce enterprises’ patent quality, and this conclusion is still valid when the endogenousness is under control, and that the suppressive effect of media attention on patent quality is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises. It is also found through further distinguishing media types that the policy-type media has a more significant effect on reducing patent quality. The mechanism tests indicate that media attention can reduce the patent quality of enterprises mainly through motivating the catering motivation of the management.

Key words: media attention, patent quality, nature of property rights, media type