Lisa Owns a Wedding Planning Business

Lisa owns a wedding planning business. Her signature wedding services are in demand all over the country and keep her very busy. She seeks legal advice from counsel when necessary. A new federal statute becomes effective in six months that allows a wedding planner to protect their signature wedding techniques as a trade secret and also creates penalties if a wedding planner infringes upon the protected trade secrets of another wedding planner. Chris, her trusted counsel, offers four strategies to plan for the new statute. First, Chris says the penalties are rather small compared to the profit she makes each time she plans a wedding. Therefore, she can just ignore the new law and all the hassle that comes with it. A second option Chris offers is that should could change her business classification from a wedding planner to an event planner because this new law only applies to wedding planners and not event planners. He believes this is a legal loophole. The third option Chris offers is to register some of her most popular services as trade secrets and create a brochure where she lists the types of signature wedding plans she has registered and not deviate from that list of offered services. This will ensure that she does not risk infringing upon a trade secret another wedding planner has protected. Finally, the fourth option Chris offers is that since the law is relatively new and virtually unknown to anyone in her industry, they should register for every possible type of wedding technique that she has ever used or can think to possibly use in the future. This will limit the options of all the other wedding planners and will therefore make her the wedding planner with the most services to offer. For each of the four options Chris offered, identify and briefly explain the type of business strategy employed.