
When trademarking a word for use on a product, the company needs to specify if it is used as a noun, an adjective, etc. The company decided Dragonlance would be used an adjective. Dragonlance Adventures, Dragonlance Chronicles, and so on. Not a problem until it came to the novels.
Since all product had to go through the legal department, we sent them the ms of the Autumn Twilight.They ruled that “dragonlance” had to be used as an adjective. In other words, Sturm could not slay the dragon with a dragonlance. He had to slay it with a dragonlance dragonlance.
They were serious!!! Our editor, Jean Black, had to go all the way to top level management to fight this. We won, thank goodness. But it was a little scary there for a while.