Trademarks can’t apply to characters, in themselves, no. A trademark can apply to a particular fixed representation but not the likeness, or ‘essence’ if you like. The essence of Indy is the whip, the hat, the grizzled demeanour, the dry humour, the archaeologist adventurer.

You can think of likeness as something that could be captured by hieroglyphics, or emoji - or a game of charades.

Think of Betty Boo or Wiley Coyote. You might not be able to close your eyes and picture them exactly but you can close your eyes and imagine the essence.

So in some jurisdictions if you register a broad representation - a likeness - you can protect that in law. In almost all jurisdictions if you photograph or draw something that literal snapshot is protected. But in many jurisdictions if I took a still from a scene of Indiana Jones (which WOULD be protected by copyright) and I described it to you and you were a great artist and drew the whip, the hat, the grizzled face, the safari vest, etc - there would be nothing to protect that likeness.

Trademarks are another thing entirely, and are things like logos, and the protection is more about commercial exploitation and preventing misleading us.

I could draw a cartoon logo of a man with a hat and a whip for my archaeological supplies shop. You could not take it and use it on your Chinese manufactured whips drop shipped via Amazon. But the owner of the Indiana Jones trademark- likeness rights, film copyright etc would be unlikely to be able to stop me using my logo until I start saying it is Indiana Jones, at which point they maybe invoke likeness rights.

There are at least three different rights classes here! It can be very confusing.