Abstract: Technology acquisition is one of the reasons why most firms choose to establish or participate in strategic alliances, which greatly enhance firms’ innovative performance. However, the influencing mechanism of firms’ technology acquisition to innovative outputs is rather a complex process. Based on existing researches, this paper brings patent strategies to construct the analytical framework of “technology acquisition-choice of patent strategy-innovative performance”, in hope to investigate how technology acquisition affects the choice of patent strategies, and their mutual effects on firms’ innovative performance. Taken firms attending IT industry strategic alliances as samples, we find that: alliance motivation of technology acquisition lead the firms to choose and implement a certain combination of patent strategies, which then enhance the transformation from technology acquisition to innovative performance, although innovative performance differs according to the alliance motivation and the strategic combination. Set market access as the performance goal, both firms’ innovative efficiency and patent outputs tend to increase, while when attempting to market extension, market capitalization or market opportunity would be consolidated.

Key words: strategic alliance, technological acquisition, patent strategy, innovative performance