Abstract: The construction of the national intellectual property demonstration cities provides a solid institutional foundation for enterprise sustainable innovation. An empirical study based on the data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2022 and incorporating technology transfer into the analysis framework of intellectual property protection and sustained innovation of enterprises shows that, intellectual property protection has a significant driving effect on both sustained innovation input and output of enterprises, that intellectual property protection can promote sustained innovation in enterprises through technology transfer, and that the impact of intellectual property protection on sustained innovation of enterprises is heterogeneous: the intellectual property protection promotes the sustained innovation of enterprises in the eastern, central, and western regions, but hinders the sustained innovation investment of enterprises in the northeast region; the intellectual property protection helps high-tech enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises to sustain innovation, but is not conducive to the sustained innovation output of non high-tech enterprises. The above conclusion implies that a sound intellectual property protection system should be established as the basis, and an efficient and interconnected technology transfer market should be accelerated. Policies should be classified based on the heterogeneity of the region, the ownership, and the technological attributes of the enterprises, in order to consolidate the policy support system for sustained innovation of the enterprise.

Key words: intellectual property protection, enterprise sustainable innovation, technology transfer, innovation input, innovation output