Using real brand names

[Azoraa]

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if there are rules about this, official or unofficial: can, should, or shouldn't you use names of actual brands in your writing?

My particular case is this: I grew up in the village where Porsche has their development center. Now, I've written a short story that is set in a post-apocalyptic future in that very village, and my protagonist talks about the ruins of this very factory.
The story has been rejected twice (there are probably many things wrong with it), and suddenly I was wondering if it might be a problem that I use the real brand names.
Generally, I chose this to create a real sense of place, as these local companies with larger global significance are central to the regional identity. And I thought it would be an interesting experiment, to work with this.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Lisa

 

[Finch]

Brand names and trademarks are an effort to protect products. If you build a car, describe it as a Porsche and try to sell it on E-bay
, you will probably make Porsche unhappy . If you write a story with a character driving a Porsche , that will have no commercial affect on Porsche , so no problems with that.
If you write a story and you suggested Porsche has a design problem , making it a dangerous car to drive . You would probably find it hard to Publish . If your story has a problem for a publisher because of some infringement with brand names , I think they would tell you.

 

[The Judge]

Simply writing about a product is OK -- a lot of bonkbusters go out of their way to bring in real life luxury goods like Bulgari and Pol Roger to show their characters' status. Where the problem arises is when there's a possibility of defamation eg the Pol Roger is poisonous and kills everyone, not because the murderer has added cyanide to it, but because of some inherent characteristic in the champagne itself such as the grapes were rotten or the barrels tainted.

So just mentioning the old Porsche factory isn't a problem, unless you're implying Porsche is itself responsible, even if only in part, for the dystopia that has been brought about.

I'm pretty sure there's another recent thread on this topic which might go into greater detail. I'll have a look for it.

 

[Azoraa]

thanks
in that case I guess I can leave it, and maybe should work on the other problems of the story instead :-/

 

[The Judge]

Well, I can't find a recent thread on this, and the only one showing up in searches is ages old, but does deal with another potential problem, which stops short of defamation, but concerns loss of reputation generally, so I might as well give that link Brand names in fiction

 

[Azoraa]

thanks, that was helpful!