MPEG has made (I think) the right choice in splitting off a track for royalty-free web video (WebVC/IVC) while continuing their traditional generational codec development (HEVC). The former allows them to utilize expired patents from their long history as well as use their weight to negotiate royalty-free grants for current tech, in order to set an unrestricted baseline. Making this a separate effort rather than enforcing those conditions on the main standardization process allows them to continue evaluating the state of the art for all other use cases.

I think this is as close as we'll get to having our cake and eating it too while patents on algorithms are still recognized.