Digital finance and intellectual property protection, as the key guarantee to support enterprises’ technological innovation activities, have a profound impact on enterprises’ R&D investment behavior, and are crucial to improving technological innovation ability.Based on the panel data of Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2011 to 2022, this paper empirically examines the relationship between digital finance, intellectual property protection and technological innovation capability of enterprises.The results show that digital finance and intellectual property protection both promote the technological innovation capability of enterprises, andthe protection of intellectual property rights has a negative regulating effect between the two functions.Heterogeneity test shows that the technological innovation capability of small enterprises, capital-intensive enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises is more strongly driven by digital finance.