Abstract: Foreign patents play a prominent role in developing countries, and technological capacity and bilateral trades are the basis of foreign patenting in China. Negative Binomial Model based on panel data is applied, and the findings are as follows. First, technological innovation capacity supports foreign countries’ patenting in China; second, it is more important for a foreign patent to protect its market in its home country from harm done by Chinese goods and services than to protect its Chinese market; third, while one country’s FDI in China increases, the country’s propensity to patent inventions decreases.