If I’m writing a fictional book, could I use real places (The White House, the Empire State Building, a local hospital (By Name)) within the storyline without fear of repercusions from those places?
Example:
Joe went into the Blockbuster video store on the corner of 34th and 8th to look for a movie to watch that night. While roaming the isles, his thoughts flashed back to a fond memory of an impromtu hand-job he received in the back room of this very Blockbuster when he worked here as a teenager.
Now, say for instance there really is a Blockbuster video story on the corner of 34th and 8th. Hell, I’m sure that I some point in time there was a guy who worked there who’s name was Joe.
Can I do this? Or, will Blockbuster contanct me and tell me that I can’t use their name in that way?
I’d say yes, you can, but it would be prudent to include a standard disclaimer along the lines of “This is a work of fiction. Although some real locations and organisations are mentioned, any similarity to real events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental”. I’m sure you’ve seen the same sort of thing in countless books and at the end of TV programmes (even in cases where any similarity to actual events wouldn’t just be coincidental, it would be pretty darn unlikely…)
On a kind of tangent; you might choose to avoid mentioning brand names and company identities wherever possible; it is often superfluous (does it actually improve the story to mention that it is a Blockbuster store?) and anyway, companies go out of business, leaving your story looking dated and generally less plausible.
You don’t mean Blockbuster – you mean a Blockbuster brand Video Store!
If you look in Writer’s Digest or other such mags, you find lots of ads by manufacturers telling you that the proper way to reference their product is “(name brand) brand (product)”. They ain’t “Kleenex”, they’re “Kleenex brand facial tissues.” The poor companies are scared about losing their trademarks because they get turned into generic terms by popular overuse (like Cellophane and Adrenaline). So they want you to write in a patently artificial fashion. Nobody follows these guidelines.
What I want to know is how W.P. Kinsella got away with making J.D. Salinger a character in his book Shoeless Joe. When they filmed it as Field of Dreams they changed it to “Terence Mann”.
Get a book or read some Web sites on publishing liability. You could be sued for practically anything. The more money you have, the more famous your book, the nastier the things you say about a real live person or a place, the more likely you are to be sued.
If you’re only going to say how beautiful and wonderful the White House and Empire State Building are, figure your chances are zero of being sued. If you’re going to claim that the Empire State Building is a death trap, and that the company that built it still follows the same slip-shod construction practices – then prepare for a call from their lawyer.
Sure. Most publishers, if not all, will include the very disclaimer that r_k mentions. This disclaimer usually applies to people, but I think it includes places as well.
One consideration, of course, is whether the context depicts the real-life place in a bad light. If you’re talking about lax security at the White House, there might be a minor backlash, but not a legal one. (And remember, the publicity would be good, not bad.)
Heh. I certainly didn’t check preview first to see what others had said.
Another problem with some brand names is that they’re local to a particular part of the country and might not play well elsewhere. Still, I think there are a lot of brand names that everyone and their mom knows about, including Blockbuster and Pizza Hut.
Adrenalin? I though it was a hormone so named because it is produced by the adrenal glands, which are so called because they are adjacent to the kidneys. Now you tell me it is a genericised trade name?
Adrenalin is (or was) a brand name for adrenaline the hormone.
And, yes, you can use brand names in your stories quite freely. You also have some leeway in mentioning names of famous people, though I wouldn’t suggest having them show up as a character if they’re still alive (but you can certainly say your main character hates the Backstreet Boys). Still, if that person is a public figure, there is little they can do, unless the character does something libelous (and it’s very hard for a public figure to win a libel suit).
Take Robert Coover’s “The Public Burning,” whose main character was Richard Nixon; it was published when Nixon was alive. Of course, it probably helped that Nixon was a good guy in the book. If it had alleged he was, say, a drug addict who buggered sheep, that could be grounds for a libel suit.
It’s rare to have someone sue because a reference in a fiction book can be related to him. Even in the case you mention, they’d have to show that you knew of the incident.
And, BTW, the Writer’s Digest guidelines for use of trademarks are just that – guidelines. At the worst, you’ll get a letter from Kleenex if you misuse their trademark, but you have a strong free speech defense if challenged. After all, “hand me a Kleenex” is what people say, not “Hand me a Kleenex brand tissue.”
Salinger is litigious and the movie producers probably didn’t want the headache. However, he wouldn’t have had much of a case if he went to court.
Yes, being “absolutely specifically correct” turns out to be a bad read. It’s just not the way things are said.
I remember years and years ago reading a book where the author always said “The hostess asked her guest if she would like a mug of coffee”. I guess the author put too much thought into it where they felt uncomfortable about saying “cup” of coffee as most people drink coffee out of a mug in a informal setting.
But the fact is, most being say, “Ya want a cup of coffee?”, regardless of what container the coffee is actually poored into.
Frankly, I would think that companys would want their product to be thought of as the defining name. “Please make me a Xerox of this, thanks”. Meanwhile, the copy is being made on a Canon copy machine.
“The killer laced a batch of strawberry Jello with rat poison and wiped out a whole kindergarten class”.
vs
“The killer laced a batch of strawberry Jello brand gelatin with rat poison and wiped out a whole kindergarten class”.
Brett Easton Ellis is all about brand names and real places, not to mention the illustrious Danielle Steele, who’s books are like friggin fashion shows.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Alienist are two books that work real people (Salvador Dali, Teddy Roosevelt) into a fictional setting with amazing continuity and entertainment value.
Now, there you may have an actual problem. If there is an exact match (and especially if there is one and only one exact match) for something you describe fictionally in the real world, that creates grounds for trouble. As I understand it, the character of Johnathan Archer on Enterprise was to have been named Jackson Archer, but there was exactly one person in the US named Jackson Archer. Evidently Paramount decided there was too much of a risk of this person’s suing for his cut of the proceeds, so they changed the name to the more common one in use.
Keep in mind that “actual problem” does not mean you might not eventually win the lawsuit. It means that paying your lawyer to fight the comparatively bottomless pockets of Blockbuster in court will cost you so much you might wish you had lost.
What it comes down to is, if there’s no good reason for it to be a Blockbuster, why bother? If there’s no good reason for it to be at a specific address, why bother?
See, that’s the thing. I guess it’s an opinion but, I love reading a book where scenes in the book take place in actually places that I’ve been.
I think it draws the reader into a real personal relationship with the story.
If I wrote a book where I happen to mention that a cover-up has been going on for 50 years when a murder occured in your high school cafeteria (naming the actual name of the high school), I think the reader would have his interest REALLY peak, if not only to say, “WHAT, that didn’t really happen” or “Is this true?”.
You know, it’s kind of a hook. For me it is anyway.
Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum mystery series takes place in Trenton, New Jersey, and all sorts of real-life places are mentioned, including streets. The characters themselves, however, are completely fictional.
I think that’s asking for trouble in that case, Omni. Remember, you’re safer vs. libel and defamation if you choose bigger targets. You could easily have someone get murdered in Madison Square Garden or the Plaza Hotel, or in a real building on the campus of Harvard. But if you say that the owner of the Moonrock Diner (a little joint near my office) murdered his business partner ten years back and put him in the soup… you’re asking for trouble.
There are two different issues here. One is using trademarked names and the other is portraying real-life places in a negative light that could potentially constitute libel. The second question is a bit more complicated, but as a general rule if your work is clearly fiction you should have no problems. Where you might run into problems is if your story began to resemble reality too much. The owner would also have to show that the business’s reputation was damaged by your portrayal, which seems unlikely in most cases.
As for the first problem, you have no obligation to identify registered trademarks as such. The only circumstance that I can think of that you have to do that is when the name appears in an advertisement.
Hmmmm, I think we’re going to have to take each situation seperately.
I think maybe I’ll call it the way I see it and leave the editing of such things to the publisher (it’s their dime).
Hell, if it’s get’s that far I’ll be happy.
I mean, I’m all for preserving ones artistic integregrity but, if they tell me to change “He chased her and finally caught and raped her in the alley behind the Loews Ten-plex” to, “He chased her and finally caught and raped her in the alley behind the movie theater” or else the book is a dead deal - OUT COMES THE WHITE-OUT.
Or, I should say - OUT COMES THE correction fluid.
Ask any intellectual property lawyer, or ask the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The trademark is an ADJECTIVE that modifies the noun (the object). It is not a name, and it is not a verb.
Using the specific (the trademark) interchangably with the generic does not make the generic specific. It simply waters down the specific.
What’s at stake for the big bad corporations is the millions of dollars they’ve spent in convincing you that “Coke” is the beverage to ask for, rather than any old fizzy, brown soft drink.
Just ask Bayer, who lost the trademark to aspirin. Or ask Jeep, which is fighting a desperate battle to prevent all SUVs from being referred to as “Jeeps.”
I bet most companies wouldn’t care at all if the mention was incidental; but if you put their name in a decidedly unfavorable light, you might get trouble.
