There was some confusion, and I'm not sure if they changed policy, but IntelliJ gave you a perpetual license for the version on the day you purchased it, not the last version at the end of the support contract
Though it is made slightly (?) better for the fact that if you for 12 month consecutively, then your fallback license is upgraded to the version 12 months ahead.
(That is, the next sentence in the bit you quoted is:)
> You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for.
I never bothered to understand what "perpetual fallback" actually meant until you explained it here. It seems like a fair arrangement except that some releases of IntelliJ have a notable quality dip while new features stabilize - it's a bummer if the 12 month period you pay into happens to be in one of those dips.
