Sorry, if I sign a licence contract stating that use of software is licenced in perpetuity, and then I get an error stating licence expired, due to guess what - the licence being time limited when I purchased one that wasn't allowed to be time limited, then they're in breach of contract. End of. This is exactly how breach of contract works - it's written in a contract what is expected and how things behave. When they don't behave exactly as written, it's a breach.
Sueing over it and wasting court time without seeking appropriate remedies - the thing that you mention is "strongly encouraged" (a shade of grey, this is black versus white), that's another matter entirely. This situation happened to me, though we didn't bother to release the lawyers on this occasion, we merely didn't order £7-figures worth of licencing from that vendor after our handful of testing licences failed to conform to requirements. The vendor would not have been able to fix it, for reasons I won't go in to. See icon for details.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
