If the goal isn’t to certify HTML5-ness so much as increase buzz about pure-web technology – and the W3C has, I believe, confirmed the latter to be the goal of the badge/logo — then no one is harmed by the status quo and a licensing scheme would be counter-productive.
It's worse than that. The goal is to create buzz for the sake of creating buzz... the problem with marketers is that they can only hold one or two buzz-words in their head at a time, and to them it's all "what those crazy hip programmers are working on in our basement, while I'm up here looking at chicks out the window". A lot of books will be sold about HTML5 and a lot of dumb sites will claim to be using it, and pretty soon when everyone's incredibly annoyed by all the HTML5 junk content out there, the marketers will realize no one actually gave a shit in the first place, find a new buzzword, and the world will move on.
I bet if Adobe changed the name of Flash 11 tomorrow to "HTML6", the marketers would go crazy for it. So would all the idiots who have no idea how web is made, but come out in armies anytime HTML5 comes up.
If the goal isn’t to certify HTML5-ness so much as increase buzz about pure-web technology – and the W3C has, I believe, confirmed the latter to be the goal of the badge/logo — then no one is harmed by the status quo and a licensing scheme would be counter-productive.