The Princeton Review, a leading provider of educational services, surveyed more than 700 undergraduate and business schools about their offerings in entrepreneurship. The survey included questions covering everything from mentoring, experiential learning and specific course offerings to alumni successes and career prospects of current students. Schools that ranked high demonstrated a commitment to entrepreneurship both inside and outside the classroom and had faculty, students and alumni actively involved and successful in entrepreneurial endeavors.

• #5 University of Dayton, Dayton, OH
• #11 Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH
• #19 Miami University, Oxford, OH
• #23 Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY

There is no doubt that entrepreneurship is becoming very popular in the Greater Cincinnati area. Local universities with such great entrepreneurship programs will only help this trend. If you or your children are interested in this field of study, make sure to look into these programs.

I personally am enrolled in the MBA program at Northern Kentucky University with a focus in Entrepreneurship. The classes I have taken thus far have been fantastic an informative.

1. A United States patent is enforceable in any country in the world.
2. It is a safe strategy to wait until sales of a product before deciding whether to file a patent application covering the product.
3. Once a patent is issued, it is enforceable forever.
4. An issued patent is considered confidential and proprietary to the patent owner.
5. An employee is obligated by patent law to assign the patent rights to her employer.
6. Copyright protection and patent protection are mutually exclusive.
7. If you copy less than 20% of a copyrighted work, it is “fair use” and not copyright infringement.
8. The copyright notice © is required for all copyrighted works.
9. A copyright owner must apply for a registration of the copyright at the time the work is created.
10. To be valid, a trademark must be registered with the United States Patent & Trademark Office.
11. A “made-up” name cannot serve as a trademark.
12. A trademak registration will expire after 50 years.
13. If a trade secret is disclosed inadvertently, it can still be protected as a trade secret.
14. Intellectual property laws do not apply in cyberspace.

Ready to score your answers?

All of the statements above are FALSE.

1. FALSE: United States patents are only enforceable in the United States.
2. FALSE: Once your idea is publicly disclosed you have a limited window of time to protect it with a patent.
3. FALSE: Patents are only enforceable for about 20 years.
4. FALSE: Patent materials are freely available to the public after the patent has been issued. Search around at the United States Patent & Trademark Office
5. FALSE: Only if the employee signed an agreement with the employer to do so before the patent was issued.
6. FALSE: A piece of work may be both copyrighted and patented.
7. FALSE: Althought difficult to enforce, it is better to just not copy works without proper attribution.
8. FALSE: If a work has an issued copyright, it is protected — regardless of the presense of a copyright notice.
9. FALSE: You may register for a copyright whenever you want. Enforcement in court, however, requires registration.
10. FALSE: To be valid, a trademark must be unique and actively used.
11. FALSE: Made-up names make some of the best trademarks.
12. FALSE: As long as a trademark is actively used, it will never expire.
13. FALSE: Guard your secrets closely.
14. FALSE: Intellectual property laws are particularly popular in cyberspace.

Thanks to Keith W. Johnson, JD., Assistant Director of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Intellectual Property and Venture Development Department for this quiz! Read more about intellectual property at Wikipedia.

Fund Isabella is the firm’s flagship offering, which is targeted towards early stage, women-led companies or those operating in the women’s market. Isabella believes that female-led entrepreneurial ventures are an untapped market in the venture capital industry, and hopes to find and fund start-ups that help promote minority leadership and entrepreneurship.

Here are some of the criteria for the fund:

• Industries targeted: Information technology, health care, retail/consumer products, communications
• Company size: $500,000 or more in annualized revenues
• Investment size: $250,000 to $1 million per company dispersed in multiple rounds
• Investment type: Equity or equity-linked investments, typically in the form of convertible preferred stock

Isabella’s current porfolio:

• Club Mom, Inc.
• Digital Scout
• Experience
• Gentra
• MarketMax
• Healthy Advice Networks
• ViaCell
• Wisdom Tools