[ggm]

Yes, thats it's role, but it does it "intelligently" where the resistor pullups do it the "dumb" way. His complaint is they cheaped out on even the resistor path.

I just wondered if some hypothesized USB-C consortium decided to "patent" how the signals work, and charge $ for compliance/conformance to the chipset for a logo badging and green tick.

It's more usual higher up the complexity food chain like MP4 decoding. Frauenhoffer wants its IPR respected. Philips made coin on conformance to the audio cassette form factor. Somebody made book with CD-ROM size, encoding. It's normal.