Does anyone have experience with fantasy fiction terminology and risks from trademarks?
As I plan more fantasy-adjacent stories, I am finding it hard to avoid trademarks. There are so many combo words that one wouldn’t think twice about, but many are trademarked. These aren’t ones I’ve looked up, but as an example, I mean terms like:
Windmage
Hedgewitch
Sun-person
Stormborne
Or even just combos, like:
He used his Powerball spell. (lottery name)
He cast the strongest summoning-spell the land had seen.
He wasn’t human. He was Sunborne.
I am finding that a lot of these trademarks are indie game studios and board games. However, small game studios get bought by big games or Microsoft. I am told that being more generic still isn’t sage, because of course, there are plenty of word combos that are still dangerous. (dawn of the dead, assassin’s creed, etc.; white wizard is a board game mark)
It’s driving me a bit crazy. Computer games are not books, but they are still in the electronic media category, which overlaps with e-books; furthermore, many games do publish some sort of companion book or game-influenced story series at some point.
Let alone just checking existing titles, famous characters, names of TV shows or movies, etc.
For example, I didn’t even know that “Ironheart” is a Marvel comic and TV show. (thankfully I thought to check)
How much do any of you who deal with such terminology worry about it?