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Can you use company names in stories? Like, Boeing for example, or Pratt and Whitney. Assuming that in the future they become spacecraft manufacturers. Pan Am and IBM where used quite famously in 2001 but that may have been by permission (or even request). I've read many books where the author states he drove an old Ford or Chevy truck as he swigged on a warm Coke or Coors or Bud or even Mountain Dew. Did the author have to request permission?
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Usually they want some kind of acknowledgment that these names have been copyrighted or trademarked, like a tiny "TM" subset after the name. (Personally, I've always found it disrupts the flow whenever I see one of those.)
Of course when writing SF you risk making a big goof. As tnwilz says, PanAm was used in "2001"---but PanAm was nowhere in the real year 2001...
posted
I don't think so. Max Barry was quite liberal with the use of company names in his first two books, Syrup (about marketing Coke) and Jennifer Government (total free market).
Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2007
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A disclaimer and an acknowledgement of the trademark owner might be a useful precaution.
But we must take care not to disparage a trademark. For example, if a story's premise was that a bad batch of TaleSpinner's World Famous Ale caused a plague, I might sue. (Unless I wrote it.)
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