: Re: Use of real organization in fiction I have just finished a mystery in which I have used the name of a real community organization. It's an organization that people either love or hate because

@Karen856

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IANAL disclaimer included by reference.

You should be okay using a real organization as background (Joe had spent nine years in the Army before being wounded and receiving a Medical Discharge), providing they aren't involved in the actual plot. That doesn't seem to be what you're writing, though.

You seem to be writing about the internal politics of an organization, which (to me) means you should be writing about a "different organization" and using the "small penis rule" to ensure they won't sue you because to do so, they'd have to admit they have a small penis. In other words, give your fictional organization one or more features that make it obvious they're not the original they're otherwise patterned after, to which the original would have to confess in order to claim in court they're who you meant.

So, if you want to use CIA, you'd make up another "agency" (Steven King called his "The Shop" in Firestarter), pattern their general operations after CIA (maybe with a little NSA or FBI thrown in), and give them an undesirable trait -- perhaps they infect all their operatives with a virus that they keep in check with periodic injections of an antiviral agent. Then you can include some tension for a rogue agent having to find a way to steal the antiviral, and ensure that the CIA won't admit that you're talking about them in any other way that matters. Might not keep them from killing you, in this case (joking!), but it should keep your out of court (or at least, it's worked that way for other authors).

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