Defensive termination is a form of implicit cross licensing of patent or other intellectual property rights.
This is a strong incentive to prevent company B from suing company A for any future patent it might receive after it has licensed patent A.
[1] The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, for example, has a defensive termination clause built into its "Eco-Patent Commons".
[2] The Apache 2.0 License also includes a defensive termination clause.
This legal term article is a stub.