Given that they've said they're investigating the issue, I honestly doubt it's an intended feature.
Just copying and pasting what I had posted earlier yesterday without seeing this thread.
After updating my game to 4.0 I went to look onto my character (and my companions) character sheet where you can see all equipped gear. Obviously because of the update all of my companions gear was sent to me via in-game mail. When wanting to re-equip some armor pieces my game would give me an error stating I cannot re-equip the items because I need equipment authorization. That should not be what it says, it should say, "previously authorized by subscription" like some of my other gear does, but all of my "artifact" gear that was equipped to my companions now says that.
On my personal character, I have a color crystal in my saber, that says "previously authorized by subscription". However, my Focus generator slot with the same color crystal stated that my stats would not count because I need equipment authorization to use it.
