企业间技术竞争与研发竞赛加剧，专利侵权事件呈高发态势，被侵权企业通过主动发起专利诉讼进行维权，兼具向利益相关者传递企业质量信号的功能已有研究都集中在利益相关者中的投资者，竞争者等的反应，至今未有研究涉及客户群体视角。本研究收集了2007一2020年中国上市公司经营数据与法律数据，探讨企业专利诉讼行为这一法律信号如何影响企业客户的稳定性，并进一步验证信号一致性和市场竞争强度对信号传递效果的调节作用。研究结果表明：主动型专利诉讼能够向客户发送体现企业技术能力和创新水平的积极信号，进而有效提升客户稳定性；信号一致性会对信号传递效果产生积极影响，而市场竞争强度则产生负向调节作用。本研究在丰富客户稳定性前因研究的同时，为企业专利诉讼动机提供了新的分析视角，给企业实践提供了针对性的指导建议。

Patents play a key role in enterprise competition. With the emergence of the “Patent Great Wall” , patent litigation has become more and more frequent. Infringed companies take the initiative to initiate patent litigation to defend their rights while transmitting signals of their operations quality to stakeholders. However, no study has yet focused on feedback from enterprise customer groups. This study collected operational and legal data of Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2020 to explore the signaling effect of enterprises' patent litigation behaviors and their influence mechanism on customer stability. The result revealed that enterprises' proactive patent litigation can effectively enhance customer stability. In addition, signal consistency positively affects the signaling effect, while the intensity of market competition has a negative moderating effect. This study enriches the related research on signaling theory from the perspective of the legal signaling effect. It supplements the analysis of the influencing factors of customer stability and provides a new perspective for the study of enterprises' patent litigation motivation. It also gives some advice on business practices.