In an attempt to add realism, authenticity, depth and believability, I inserted real person, real establishment and real trademarks into the story. This even required extra research beyond just making something up.

My Intellectual Property Lawyer takes a conservative approach and advises me to substitute those real-life elements with fictious ones or with generalized descriptors and labels.

Other proper names, such as street names, real city names, and well-known public landmarks are fine to keep as their actual name. Examples include University names, famous bike trail names, and even sporting events.

The net result is that I revisited many sections of the novel to make these proper name substitutions. During this editing process, I also checked the Internet to make sure fictious names that I created for restaurants, fictitious celebrities, and product trademarks were not already taken.

So my lesson learned is to save time on my next novel and just make up proper names as much as possible. It is faster than researching real names, saves time in editing, and lowers my chance of objections from outside parties about intellectual property violations.