Human capital quality is the advanced element of innovation drive, and intellectual property protection is the institutional guarantee of innovation incentive. How to accelerate the high synergy between human capital quality and intellectual property protection is an important issue facing China''s high-quality economic development. Based on the human capital quality model, the human capital quality of 31 provinces in China (Due to the lack of data, the statistical data mentioned here do not include Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Macao Special Administrative Region and Taiwan Province.) from 2000 to 2019 is calculated by the data from A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen and China Family Panel Studies(CFPS), and the influence mechanism of human capital quality on regional innovation performance from the perspective of intellectual property protection is explored. Many achievements are achieved: ①The improvement of human capital quality can significantly promote regional innovation performance, which is of strong validity after a series of robustness tests and endogenous problems solving.②Intellectual property protection is the mechanism of human capital quality to promote regional innovation performance, but this mechanism is only shown in the region where intellectual property protection and human capital quality are highly synergistic.③In addition, regions tend to choose independent innovation to obtain technological progress when intellectual property protection and human capital quality are highly synergistic, which is of competence in effectively promoting regional innovation performance; On the contrary, regions tend to achieve technological progress through imitation innovation, but fail to promote regional innovation performance. These findings provide decision-making reference and empirical evidence for accelerating the implementation of the strategy of reinvigorating China through talent and building innovation power.