All of the new codecs the author proposed as alternatives have the same issue: companies who took no part in creating the codec may someday decide that the codec infringes their patents and make everyone using the codec pay for a license.
For Daala, they've purposefully avoided 'technologies' that have been used by other codecs before. This severely reduces the risk of coming across such a patent. Xiph also apply for patents themselves, to ensure it's protected for the future. Below is an introductory video about daala, that talks about this a bit.
The same applies to every other codec (or piece of software) as well.
MP3 had Sisvel who came late with legitimate claims (as far as patents go). HEVC now has this second pool coming out of nowhere.
If anything, the promise of MPEG-LA, that they manage to build a reliable licensing regime, is broken - and I think it's good that this starts to show.
In particular it pleases me that this new group pulls the same stunts on MPEG-LA that MPEG-LA used on others (see their attempt to build a VP8 pool): vague statements of how surely there must be some more patents that they'll maintain soon.
Abstractly, sure - all software is vulnerable that way. However, specifically, if you create a new codec that is heavily based on previous ones, you are clearly more at risk, than if you create a more original codec using novel methods. The latter is safer.
Doesn't it make sense that a codec that's heavily patented would be more likely to have all of the patents known, rather than one that hasn't been looked at, and is likely to accidentally infringe one of the patents in the minefield that exists?
I don't think so. The more novel something is, the higher the chance that no one thought of it, and so could not patent it.
If something is patented, that means people know of it, and will try to patent similar things or parts of it that haven't been patented yet, making it riskier.
In the case of NETVC, all contributors are required to submit IPR declarations. This doesn't prevent other uninvolved parties from popping up with patents later, but is still far better than the "patent-blind" approach that MPEG takes.
