Abstract: Technology cooperation is the main way and an important support to promote regional collaborative innovation and high-quality integrated development. Based on the data of joint patent applications for inventions, the study analyzed the spatial and temporal evolutionary characteristics of the technology cooperation network in the Yangtze River Delta region from 2000 to 2019, and identified its cooperation patterns and evolutionary paths with the help of social network analysis and GIS spatial analysis techniques. The results showed that: (1) Technical cooperation network in the Yangtze River Delta expanded rapidly, showing obvious small-world and scale-free characteristics, and a hierarchical feature dominated by a few core cities such as Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nanjing. Network centripetal development trend slowed but remained significant. (2) The spatial distribution of the technical cooperation network was extremely heterogeneous, showing decreasing characteristics from the coast to the interior and along the river to the two wings. The evolution of the network structure demonstrated spatial stickiness and temporal inertia. (3) From the perspective of breadth and depth of cooperation, technology cooperation patterns were classified into four types: high breadth-high depth (H-H), high breadth-low depth (H-L), low breadth-high depth (L-H) and low breadth-low depth (L-L), which were spatially characterized by a continuous patchwork of plates. (4) There existed three main paths of upgrading, transformation and locking in the evolution of technology cooperation patterns in the Yangtze River Delta region. The corresponding optimization directions were proposed according to the risks faced by each pattern. This study made attempts to provide reference and guidance for building innovation communities, improving regional innovation systems and achieving high-quality integrated development in the Yangtze River Delta region.