Indiana Jones Got Sued for The Most Unlikely Harrison Ford Scene

In 1981, the first Indiana Jones movie took the world by storm. The action adventure franchise, directed by Steven Spielberg and led by Harrison Ford, featured thrilling adventures, historical relics, an epic soundtrack, and a dashing hero.

This year, 42 years after the first movie, the grand finale was released. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had our pulses racing, had us warm with nostalgia and brought back all the action, adventure, and excitement we had so hungrily missed.

However, the fifth and final Indiana Jones film also came with a whole lot of trouble. Besides being a painfully obvious box office bomb, making a loss of over $100 million, the grand conclusion has also run into some pretty serious legal troubles over the unauthorized use of a brand’s product.

So, what was wrong ?

His fedora hat and his trusty whip are iconic parts of Indie’s character, and go with him on all his adventures. Another essential piece of adventure equipment is a good backpack, so it’s not unusual to see him with one, however, the backpack he used in the recent movie was done so without permission.

Now, obviously we’re not talking about the character Indiana Jones, but Lucasfilm the world’s leading entertainment service company, who used the backpack made by Frost River Trading Co., without consulting the brand. Less than a month after the movie’s release, Frost River filed a lawsuit against them.

Could this have been an honest mistake?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Not only did Lucasfilm use the bag without permission, the entertainment company also removed all identifying Frost River elements and branding from the bag, trying to disguise it, thus violating federal trademark law in the process.

To make matters worse, Lucasfilm had partnered with the Filson outerwear and bag brand, and tried to pass off the Frost River bag as a Filson product in an advertisement. This situation could have been avoided if Lucasfilm had simply approached Frost River for permission, but instead tried to rip the small company off.

Being such a massive production by an established company, one would never imagine that something like this would happen. If it was a mistake that slipped through the cracks, then how? If it was done intentionally, then why?

Indiana Jones has escaped violent booby traps, writhing pits of snakes, cannibals and even Nazis, but there’s no getting away from this lawsuit, in which the adventure film franchise all about the hero, has become the villain.

Backpacks are meant to make things easier to carry, but this Frost River backpack has resulted in quite a weight on Lucasfilm’s shoulders.

Source: Frost River.