The Impact of Intellectual Property Protection “Distance” on Collaborative Innovation Quality: Evidence From Chinese Listed Firms

Cross‐regional collaboration plays a growing role in firm innovation, yet interregional institutional differences create frictions that undermine the quality of collaborative outcomes. Whether institutional distance in intellectual property protection (IPP) reduces collaborative innovation quality and whether professional intermediaries can alleviate these frictions remain open questions. This study investigates how interregional distance in IPP (DIPP) affects interregional collaborative patent quality (ICPQ) using extensive 2007–2022 collaborative invention patent data from Chinese A‐share listed firms. We find that greater DIPP significantly reduces ICPQ, as divergent IPP regimes erode mutual trust, hinder knowledge sharing, and raise coordination and enforcement costs between partners. Patent agency experience effectively mitigates this adverse effect, suggesting that professional intermediaries help bridge institutional gaps between collaborating regions. These findings hold across a range of robustness tests and an instrumental variable analysis addressing endogeneity. The study contributes to the institutional distance literature by identifying patent agency expertise as a mechanism through which firms can navigate interregional institutional frictions. It also offers practical guidance for firms and policymakers seeking to leverage patent agency services to support high‐quality cross‐regional innovation.