Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, is any effort designed to prevent the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.[1]
I would say it probably does qualify as copy protection of some sort, but I think a point was to use more easily prosecuted trademark law against less easily prosecuted piracy.
it's copy protection in the sense that if you distribute a pirate cartridge of a game that shows the nintendo logo on boot they have a stronger case in many courts against that piracy.
Interesting Nintendo fact
hollyhoppet wrote
This was pretty interesting. Issues behind copy and piracy protection notwithstanding, I really like clever solutions like this