Every codec's situation is unclear. MPEG-LA doesn't provide indemnification either, and they would be stupid to do so.

As an example, there are license pools for MP3, and companies generally pay them. Yet over the course of several years, German customs cleared out displays with mp3 players at Cebit because their creators didn't know that there's another patent to license.

Now, that isn't too bad for someone providing indemnification: It would be a matter of the pool paying that third party, and including that in their future pool fees.

"Unfortunately" a patent holder is generally allowed to control distribution entirely (eg refuse to license to any single party they dislike). Indemnification in that case would probably mean reimbursing the costs of development and production (and maybe lost future income).

This is quite old: the patent "issue" is more clear, see http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/google... . There is still an issue with Nokia ( http://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/2035/ ) but at the moment it looks like that everybody is ignoring them.