Based on data from cities at the prefectural level and above from 2010 to 2021, this study takes the National Intellectual Property Model City policy as a quasi-natural experiment to analyze the impact of intellectual property governance capacity on the firms’entry into strategic emerging industries. The study finds that strengthening intellectual property governance can attract firms to enter strategic emerging industries. Mechanism tests show that improving urban intellectual property governance capacity drives firms’entry into strategic emerging industries by enhancing knowledge spillovers, alleviating financing difficulties, and enriching talent supply. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effects of intellectual property governance capacity on the firms’entry into strategic emerging industries are more pronounced in eastern cities and cities with higher administrative hierarchies, weaker market segmentation, and intellectual property protection centers for strategic emerging industries. Further discussion suggests that strengthening intellectual property governance contributes to the cultivation of strategic emerging industrial clusters and the enhancement of new quality productive forces by facilitating enterprises’entry into strategic emerging industries. The positive effects of intellectual property governance capacity also exhibit spatial spillovers.