Amazon has pulled The Avengers Phase One Blu-ray collector’s set after a lawsuit was filed against Marvel for its packaging.

We reported a few weeks back that Marvel/Disney were being sued by German luggage company Rimowa GmbH due to the use of their briefcase design for The Avengers Blu-ray collector’s set. It appears that this lawsuit may have gained some traction as Amazon has now pulled the collector’s set which includes the patented silver briefcase seen in the film.

The official complaint from the German luggage company:

“Images of the replica briefcase on Marvel’s advertising materials, and fan video from Marvel’s product display at this year’s Comic-Con convention, show the plastic ‘replica case’ to be a close copy of Rimowa’s Topas attaché case in every respect but quality — from the proportions and coloring, to the style of the handle and latches, and, of course, in the use of the trademarked parallel ridges around the body of the case.”

The German luggage company had given Marvel permission to use the case design in The Avengers film, but they did not work out a deal for the “Tesseract case” to be mass produced for distribution. There is no official word from Amazon or Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment company that’s distributing the collector’s set, but Amazon has now made the set unavailable to pre-order and its site currently states that the “item is currently under review and is not available to pre-order.”

A Blu-ray.com forum user who pre-ordered the set at MovieStop said the company received an email concerning the collector’s set, seemingly confirming our suspicions:

“I just called them (Moviestop) and was told they received an e-mail from Disney saying that this will not be released on 25 September, the e-mail said it may be released at a later time.”

We imagine many Avengers fans have already pre-ordered the set, so it should be interesting to see how this pans out. We’ll keep you updated and if you’ve pre-ordered the set, let us know if you’ve received any emails from Amazon concerning the availability of this collector’s set.

The Avengers Blu-ray/DVD will hit stores September 25, with or without this collector’s edition.

Source: Amazon