Objective To investigate the requirements for patent knowledge in postgraduate nursing students so as to provide a basis for nursing patent education.Methods Full-time nursing postgraduates from 60 colleges and universities were investigated by self-directed questionnaires and a total of 119 validated questionnaires were returned.The survey included:general information;learning requirements for nursing patent knowledge (learning content and forms,incentive system and learning platforms learning approaches).Five-point Likert scale below was used:1-Strongly disagree,2-Disagree,3-Neither agree nor disagree,4-Agree,5-Strongly agree.All statistical analyses were performed with IBM SPSS software (version 21.0).Quantitative data were expressed as mean ± standard deviation.Ordered categorical variables were compared between two groups and among above three groups with use of the Mann Whitney rank sum test and the Kruskal-Wallis test respectively.P＜0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results There was no significant difference in the effect of types of postgraduate (professional and academic) on the requirement for nursing patent knowledge in postgraduate (P＞0.05),while significant differences were observed in those of paper publishing,project participation and patent application (P＜0.05).Conclusion Nursing patent education can be well established only under the strong supports from the universities,faculties,supervisors as well as students,thereby developing the innovation of postgraduates.