SummaryBased on a survey of more than 2000 enterprises and the case analysis of a typical enterprises, this paper attempts to explore the characteristics of patenting development and the factors influencing patenting in Zhejiang in China. The paper proposes that patenting in Zhejiang enterprises is mainly affected by the technological capabilities of the enterprises and legal regime for IPR. A survey of these enterprises reveals that the technological capabilities of most are still at the stage of imitation and the number of the patents is rather small, compared with the large number of enterprises, though some leading enterprises are climbing the evolutionary ladder from primitive to creative imitation and becoming active in patenting. During the past 20 years the environment for IP protection has been greatly improved with the innovation of IP systems in Zhejiang, which encourage enterprise innovation, patent application and patenting management. The paper finally gives some suggestions on how to improv...