First, that's a principle of the penal system, not the civil courts which would decide such matters. Second, this didn't involve any legal action at all, and was instead just as a threat, basically saying that if they went forward with the standard, they would sue companies that invested into the standard, but by that point the companies would be in a bad situation as they'd have invested tremendous resources into the codec.

The moment you make any kind of non trivial program (say 20k lines and above) you almost guaranteed violate some patent so they were probably even right with their claims.