One detail that caught my eye: > ISO and ITU do not require the members working on their various standards and specifications to give up any specific patent cl

One detail that caught my eye: > ISO and ITU do not require the members working on their various standards and specifications to give up any specific patent claims that may cover the technology that they define. Quite the contrary -- the ITU specifically had language that every contributor agreed to provide their contributions royalty-free. Unfortunately the politics got complexated when it became a joint ITU/ISO thing. Some of the biggest players made noises that they would agree to a "royalty-free baseline profile" (ie without some of the more patent-rich features, such as interlace and B-frames). At the last minute, like Lucy from Peanuts, they took their ball and went home, leaving all the smaller players who had an interest in a truly free standard high and dry. This event IMSHO left a vacuum that resulted in pent-up demand for a truly free codec, which created room for Theora and WebM. [disclaimer: I was involved]