This study examined the factors influencing knowledge acquisition by multinational corporations (MNCs) from host countries where their overseas R&D laboratories are located, drawing on the resource-based view and evolutionary economics perspectives. The results of the empirical analysis using negative binomial regression first supported the inverted U-shaped hypothesis for the relationship between the technological capabilities of the MNC headquarters and the degree of knowledge acquisition from the host country. That is, the technological capabilities held by the MNC headquarters, up to a certain level, strongly operate through the strengthening of learning and absorptive capacity to increase knowledge acquisition from the host country by the headquarters' R&D laboratory. However, beyond that level, when the capabilities lead to well-established firm-specific technological trajectories, they appear to diminish the motivation for acquiring external knowledge from the host country. Furthermore, the relative level of the home country's technological capabilities vis-à-vis the host country was found to affect the MNC's learning motivation, such that the stronger the home country's relative technological capabilities, the less the headquarters' R&D laboratory acquires technology from the host country.