the dreaded licenses.licx file and the IDE
After about 2-3 hours of hair pulling, I now have this figured out (thanks Jose).
Visual Studio trying to make this easier for you, adds a file to your project called licenses.licx. Such file is a list of all the controls used in your project that require a license and when you compile your project. The compiler automatically embeds the appropriate licenses for you into your exe.
The controls are added to the list in licenses.licx when you drop it into a form but sometimes this does not happen. This is a Visual Studio problem not a problem specifically related to a 3rd party vendor's controls.
So, after getting a 3rd party control patch, I had to delete all of my .licx files and rebuild them. What a mess. The easiest way to rebuild them is to drop a dummy form into your project and drag and drop the 3rd party controls onto the form. This will create a new .licx file with the appropriate license info.