The invention relates to the field of integrated circuits and aims to provide an IP hard core intellectual property protection method and device based on path delay, wherein the IP hard core intellectual property protection method and device can be used for intellectual property protection of a timing sequence logic which can be applied to input and output and needs multiple delay periods. The IP hard core intellectual property protection method and device can effectively prevent various IP core theft problems, such as a brute force attack, a cleaning attack and reverse engineering. According to the technical scheme, the IP hard core intellectual property protection method based on the path delay comprises the following steps that 1, signals need to pass through a timing sequence logic path circuit of multiple time periods from input to output; 2, a protective path is designed; 3, a designed protective circuit comprises a shifting register, a finite state machine circuit and an interconnecting line, wherein the shifting register is used for storing an initialization secret key, the finite state machine circuit is used for secrete key checking, and the signal delay of the interconnecting line is adjustable; 4, the purpose of protecting a circuit IP is achieved by adjusting and controlling the input and output delay of the protective circuit and the protected circuit. The IP hard core intellectual property protection method and device based on the path delay are mainly applied to integrated circuits.