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The license fee is built into the price, it is rarely a separate line-item purchase, unless you have a system that can update itself, say over the internet. Even if BMW didn't charge for the actual media and distribution, or configuring it to work on their nav system, they'd still owe the outside company a license fee to authorize them to enable it to work on your system. Think about it like the operating system for a computer...you get a license to run WINDOWS, on the machine, but that doesn't mean you can legally make a copy and load it onto multiple computers without paying Microsoft a license fee...same as for the nav and the maps. You bought the nav hardware, BMW provided the software that integrates it into the car, but they bought a license for the map software itself on your behalf. Want to update that portion, new license required...and therefore, a cost. As I said, some hand-held devices are sold with a lifetime update license...it would have been nice if we had that, but we don't, so it costs to update.
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