Abstract: As for high-tech firms, trademarking, which is related with firms’ brand strategy and innovative ability, is one critical factor influencing their success. This paper aims to study whether the access to venture capital (VC) has an effect on firms’ trademarking activities. Based on related theories, this paper proposes two hypotheses: influences of the access to VC on the propensity to register trademarks and on the market scope of trademarks respectively. The empirical data contains 192 firms operating in the UK micro and nanotechnology sector. Considering the dummy variable nature of the propensity to register trademarks, this paper chooses a Logit model to do the regression analysis. As for the market scope of trademarks, given its count variable nature, a negative binormial model and a Poisson model are chosen to deal with the data. The regression results indicate that VC funding has a positive effect on the propensity to register trademarks, as well as on the market scope of trademarks. Therefore, the government should encourage the development of VC, and encourage VC going to high-tech firms so as to forter their trademarking consciousness.

Key words: venture capital, trademark, high-tech firm, panel data