Abstract: The city is an important space carrier for the implementation of the national innovation-driven development strategy. Constructing intercity innovation network is an important way to promote knowledge spillover between cities, optimize regional innovation resource allocation and improve the innovation competitiveness of cities. Based on joint applications for invention patent of 290 Chinese cities in 2014 mined from State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), with the help of social network analysis and gravity model approach, this article aims to reveal the topological structure, spatial pattern of Chinese intercity innovation network and tries to analyze the underlying proximity mechanism. The main conclusions are as follows: Firstly, as to topological structure, Chinese intercity innovation network is extensive but low-density and the network connection is relatively loose. Most intercity innovation cooperation is low- intensity, needing further enhancements. In addition, the entire network has an obvious clustering trend and presents a core- periphery structure with hierarchies, of which the center core layer contains only one city-Beijing but the periphery layer contains more than half of the cities. Secondly, as to spatial pattern, taking Hu's line as boundary, the spatial heterogeneity of Chinese intercity innovation network is significant. The network connections are dense and strong in the east but sparse and weak in the west. Similar to geographical distribution characteristic of the network, the city grade is high in the east but low in the west. Moreover, different levels of network flow intensity have significant spatial heterogeneity. Core and sub-core cities are featured by a ‘big scattered and small gathering’ spatial pattern. Last but not least, the test results of negative binomial regression model show that geographical distance is an impediment to Chinese intercity innovation cooperation, which is a powerful refutation of the claim that geography has died. Meanwhile, institutional proximity and technical proximity both have a significant effect on innovation cooperation between Chinese cities.