using real life names

You can do whatever you want. Its only a problem when you start using the intellectual property of other artists (like song lyrics) without permission.

What stops most people from including real life products and companies in their works isnt the law, its commerce. Why do a commercial for a company that isnt even paying you for it? But yeah, unless you wander into full-on slander (eg a plot where Pepsi allows terrorists to put poison in their soda), just mentioning real products and companies falls under fair use.

A novel set in contemporary America would be pretty strange if a big city didn't have a Wal-Mart, a McDonald's, etc.

snafu1056 said:

What stops most people from including real life products and companies in their works isnt the law, its commerce. Why do a commercial for a company that isnt even paying you for it?.

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I've never, ever met a writer, not one, who didn't use real life products and places for this reason. I've never even read about a writer who thought this way. Commerce simply has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Some writers are simply afraid of "dating" their work, which is silly, and others skimp on real places and products because they don't want the story to read like a catalog, which makes more sense.

Most, however use real products and places whenever it seems right for verisimilitude, which is pretty darn often.

Writers try to make the setting realistic, and do not hesitate to use a real product or place, when this is the case.

I doubt anyone thinks, "I don't want to do a commercial for McDonald's, so I'm not going to mention it in my story."

If anyone does, they need to stop. Using a real place is about verisimilitude, not about commerce.