Just an observation here, but with regards to saying file formats cannot be patented, Microsoft have patented the ASF wrapper format (US pat #6,041,345) according to VirtualDub, a popular video manipulation tool.
Don't ask me for details, because I have none, but that seems to be an outright patenting of a file format, and not even a codec, just a wrapper format for the codecs they use.
__________________
<------ ;/
|