First of all he will make sure to expose all known patents that may be regarded as submarine patents to Theora (or Dirac, or even OMS). The problem is not that these patents are not known. The problem is that nobody wants to point their fingers at them for fear of waking up sleeping beasts. But if it is done in the right way and any potential claims are refuted by a multitude of lawyers before a claim can even be raised, then this will help attack fears.

Secondly, Rob is not just looking at open codecs. He is also looking at the longer history of patents in video (and possibly audio) coding and expose patents that are claimed on licensed technology but which are invalid because of prior art. In this way, it may be possible to turn some of the existing proprietary codecs into open codecs.

Lastly I should mention that an open collection of evaluated patents and prior art in media will be of tremendous value towards creating new codecs, which can then more easily avoid patent traps and more easily claim patent-freedom from the start of their existence.

Yes, it is an enormous effort, and yes, we can never be sure that it is fully done and that all submarine patents have been found. But if we regard the topic of SCO and the complexity of that case and the involvement of lawyers with it, I think there is a large chance that Rob can achieve the task.