More codec development work is done outside of patent-centric organizations by a significant margin. Just like any other domain technological/communication standard the most significant impetuous comes from the drive to make superior products.

Work inside patent driven development groups also suffers substantial complexity bloat because there is a huge incentive for each participant to get a patentable component into the standard in order to benefit from cross-licensing. Often these 'improvements' are insignificant or even a net loss (the cost of the bitstream to signal them on is greater than their improvement over any credible collection of material).