A cease and desist letter is one billable hour. Writing a licensing agreement could easily be dozens of hours, and would still protect the company's IP equally

A cease and desist letter is one billable hour. Writing a licensing agreement could easily be dozens of hours, and would still protect the company's IP equally well. This is a management decision, as it is for most media companies. The lawyers might even disagree with his strategy, that they wrote a C&D is no more indicative of their minds than an engineer's code. Professional execution doesn't imply agreement, just recognition of authority.