I agree. These types of agreements are a lawyer's dream come true. They get to draft the deals, interret the deals and administer disputes etc. You will alwys need them especially where IP is involved.

I have worked on negotiations for a number of complex high value agreements where the other parties were much stronger financially than the company I worked for. The contracts I worked on took almost 3 months from start to finish and that was what our team was working on almost exclusively. Once the contracts were done there were only a few people who clearly understood the sensitivity factors in those agreements because of: confidentiality, need and the complexity. Also while negotiating both parties hold their cards close to their vest to ensure they can get maximum value for their company. We built financial models and modified them as negotiations progressed so that we could assess, as best as possible, the impact of contract provisions (each item that is changed can appear to be minor but yet have a significant net income impact) and to project the medium term revenues and net income for these contracts. This is even more complex when you have multiple license agreements being negotaited in parallel.