It is far from true that a patentholder that knew about Theora for years would be simply unable to enforce their patent against Theora users. It's not necessar

It is far from true that a patentholder that knew about Theora for years would be simply unable to enforce their patent against Theora users. It's not necessarily false either. The doctrine of laches (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_%28equity%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_%28equity%29) says that you can't deliberately delay legal action in order to run up the alleged damages or prevent them from taking alternate paths. By publicly making potential patent holders aware of what they're doing, Xiph should be in a good position to claim that defense. (In case it's not blatantly obvious, IANAL).