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by tofof 237 days ago
This is how Nintendo engineered a legal argument disallowing 3rd party cartridges original GameBoy. The cartridge needed to display the Nintendo logo on startup which was checked pixel for pixel, otherwise the GameBoy wouldn't proceed with booting. Third party carts couldn't do so without infringing trademark.
1 comments

Note that the courts ruled this technique invalid in Sega v. Accolade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade

But that was in a pre-DMCA world, before the anti-circumvention provisions gave these companies more legal weapons to criminalize fair use and competition.