Abstract:     In the complex and fast-changing business environment and increasingly fierce dynamic competition, continuous innovation is of great significance to the long-term success and competitive advantage of enterprises. With the accelerated tightening of China′s intellectual property legal system and strengthening of patent enforcement, patent litigation has gone beyond the scope of legal protection, reflecting competition intentions and becoming a strategic weapon for competition among enterprises. Under the background that strengthening technological innovation and strategic use of patent litigation has become an effective way for enterprises to obtain sustainable competitive advantages, exploring the influencing factors and regularity of corporate technological innovation decision-making has gradually become an important common topic in the academia and practice communities. Scholars have conducted many empirical studies on the relationship between patent litigation and corporate innovation, but the existing research has not formed a consistent conclusion on the relationship between the two. Moreover, they mainly explore the direct impact of patent litigation on corporate innovation from the resource-based perspective, and lack of investigation based on the dynamic competition.This paper introduced the perspective of dynamic competition, integrated the attention-based view and event system theory, and took 1302 listed manufacturing enterprises in China′s Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2012 to 2016 as the research object, and deeply explored the relationship between invention patent litigation and the accused enterprise′s innovation, intending to focus on the following three questions: first, different from developed countries, in the context of China, what is the relationship between invention patent litigation and the accused enterprise′s innovation; second, whether the top management team (TMT)′s innovation attention can moderate the relationship between invention patent litigation and the accused enterprise′s innovation; and third, whether the attributes of patent litigation event affect the moderating role of the TMT′s innovation attention on the relationship between invention patent litigation and the accused enterprise′s innovation.This paper drew main conclusions as follows. First, invention patent litigation has a significant positive impact on the accused enterprise′s innovation investment. Second, the TMT′s innovation attention plays a negative moderating role in the relationship between invention patent litigation and the accused enterprise′s innovation investment. Third, as patent litigation events become more prominent—the greater the disruption, the more critical the litigation timing, and the longer the litigation duration, the negative moderating effect of the TMT′s innovation attention on the relationship between invention patent litigation and the accused enterprise′s innovation investment will be weakened.This paper has two theoretical contributions. First, exploring the boundary effect of invention patent litigation on the accused enterprise′s innovation from the perspective of dynamic competition is conducive to deepening understanding of the impact of patent litigation on the accused enterprise′s innovation decision-making, and enriching the theoretical basis of the relationship between litigation and innovation. Further, this paper also revealed the conditions under which patent litigation will promote or inhibit the accused enterprise′s innovation, which is conducive to the fusion of opposing views in the research on the relationship between litigation and innovation. Second, this paper introduced the attention-based view and event system theory, focused on the TMT′s innovation attention and the attributes of patent litigation event, and then expanded the logic that patent litigation affects corporate innovation decision-making, thus promoting the research on litigation and innovation from the level of overall characteristics to the level of internal decision makers and the attributes of patent litigation event. Finally, from practice, this paper will provide a more appropriate theoretical framework and logical reference for understanding corporate patent litigation and innovation.

Key words: dynamic competition, event system, patent litigation, TMT innovation attention, innovation input