Ok, so it's 1993, and Dennis Nedry has been living/working on this island full of dinosaurs for the last 5 years. He's been frustrated with his pay rate for doing IT work debugging 2 million lines of code.
He's at a point where asking for a raise is look upon with deaf ears from his millionaire (which today would be billionaire) boss.
So he starts talking to a rival company. He accepts a job to steal all these vials of dino dna, to hand over to this other company which wants to build their own Jurassic Park. They have none of the research done, and this one move catches them up on 15 years worth of research.
So he writes a code, which disables security, on an island where the only think seperating you from beast is electricity. He shuts that off.
Now he's taken the vials, the dinosaurs are running wild, he's driving in the rain, and despite living here for the past 5 years, is uncertain where the docks are. He takes a turn too fast, crashes his car into the directions sign, and now he has no clue which direction to go. Worse still his jeep is now stuck in the mud.
And this is where it gets really stupid. Instead of trying to pull his jeep OUT of the ditch, he climbs DOWN a hill over a waterfall. This is not a dinosaur paddock, because there are no fences, but it is an artificial jungle area with plenty of trees.
He connects the rip cord from his jeep to a tree at the bottom of a waterfall, and the bottom of a hill.
Now lets pause for a minute. Let's say this island had no dinosaurs. He's just on an island, in a storm, stuck in mud. Lets say nothing stops him from using the rip cord.
His jeep would then pull itself towards a waterfall, and then roll down a hill. Best case scenario, it somehow ends up upright, and not on it's side.
It would still be stuck in the mud, but now it's also at the bottom of an unclimbable hill.
And remember, the boat is at the dock saying they leave in 15 minutes. All this time fussing with the rip cord, is all on the clock, which started back when he was in the control center BEFORE he turned off power, and stole the embrios.
Realistically, he's likely got 5 or so minutes to get to the dock in a storm where he doesn't even know which direction to go.
Dennis Nedry didn't fail because of a dilophosaurus. He failed because he was stressed, full of anxiety, had a half thought out plan, and no foresight to execute the plan.
Which is insane, when you consider he had no issue with the hard part. Writing the code to terminate security. Syncing up the code to your watch so you have an exact down to the second knowledge of when the camera turns off. And a way to slip out the building with a shaving can full of dinosaur dna vials. Once you get to the jeep, that SHOULD be the easy part!
Instead, he got lost on an small island with very few roads, that he should by this point know like the back of his hand.
Now for the kicker.
Not once in the movie did they ever say what his plan was to avoid legal actions.
Lets say he gets away with it. He can't do it again. It'll be obvious who did it by the next day. So what does he do? Would police not just arrest him, and extradite him to the united states to stand trial?
None of his plan ever had a chance of working.
Well, the US asserts the authority to investigate and charge crimes in international waters in certain circumstances.
They're not lawless a lawless vacuum, otherwise maritime piracy would just be a thing people let happen.
If the parties are American the US can claim jurisdiction. If it involves US assets they can. If the location is outside any nation they can.
If it's a severe crime then anyone can prosecute it. That's how piracy laws work.
Further, a nation has some degree of jurisdiction over its citizens wherever they are. Any nation has jurisdiction over its citizens, and jurisdiction over crimes committed against it's citizens. If you kill an American and then go to new York, you can totally be prosecuted by the federal government.
We also have a specific law that holds that if an American conducts economic espionage anywhere that that's in the jurisdiction of the US courts.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-104publ294/html/PLAW-104publ294.htm
International territory doesn't mean no one has jurisdiction. It means no one has ownership or exclusive control.
Nedry would be absolutely fucked, and no nation would deny the extradition request.
Again: Nedry would only be fucked if Hammond was willing to reveal all of his own potentially criminal activity. And if Hammond was willing to do that, he wouldn't have set up shop so far away from any sort of regulation.
I'm just pointing out that "what laws?” isn't how remote islands work.
If Hammond would follow up with an espionage complaint is a different question.
That being said: I always thought the reason for the isolation was to keep the dinosaurs on the island and to keep anyone from creating regulations, not to avoid any that already existed. There's nothing illegal about cloning dinosaurs.
Since it was a theme park they were opening it's not like they were planning on secrecy for much longer.
Is there any reason to believe jurassic park was somehow incorporated in the US? I always assumed they used some small island nation or something
Doesn't even matter: Hammond and nedry were both US citizens, and part of the conspiracy was overtly planned in the US.
Beyond that, some of the people harmed are also US citizens.
Those reasons are sufficient alone for US jurisdiction if he came to the US or to justify an extradition request.
Finally, according to the Jurassic park fandom wiki the park was owned by a US corporation. Not mentioned in the movie but shown on computer screens and on helicopters and such.