If by "Corporate Blessed", you mean codecs like H.264, there's a very simple answer to that. Nokia and Apple pay licensing fees to a company called MPEG LA. MPEG LA indemnifies Nokia and Apple from patent lawsuits over the use of MPEG-related codecs. Should anyone come forward with a new patent, the MPEG LA will litigate the matter and/or come to an agreement with the patent holder to license the patent on behalf of their member companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Patent_licensing Thanks, Jerason Banes On Dec 12, 2007 7:15 AM, Joseph Daniel Zukiger < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What guarantees do Apple, Nokia, et. al. offer that > their corporate-blessed containers/formats/codecs are > free from threat for (ergo) the rest of us? Are they > willing to make binding agreements to go to bat for > _us_ in court?