Based on the analysis of the mechanism of intellectual property protection on the import trade of enterprises, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of intellectual property protection on the import scale and import margin of China's industrial enterprises using the matching data of China's customs product data and China's industrial enterprise data. The results show that: (1) the improvement of intellectual property protection will affect the import scale by increasing the types of imported products and reducing the import trade density; (2) the impact of intellectual property protection on the import trade of enterprises in the eastern region is significantly positive, while in the western region, it is significantly negative; (3) from the perspective of ownership, the impact of intellectual property protection on the import trade of private enterprises is not significant, but that of foreign-funded enterprises is significant; (4) from the industry point of view, the impact of intellectual property protection on patent-intensive industry and trademark-intensive industry is greater than that on non-intellectual property protection ones; (5) from the perspective of different productivity enterprises, the impact of intellectual property protection on the import trade of high productivity enterprises is greater than that of low productivity enterprises; (6) in the regions with high imitation threat, the impact of intellectual property protection on import trade is greater, and the higher degree of enterprise innovation, the less impact of intellectual property protection on import trade.
