Well, that claim is completely disingenuous. In reality MPEG-LA oversees licensing for a set of known codecs, the most prominent being H.264. When a somewhat-viable competitor comes to town they just claim they own the competitor and therefore don't even need to compete. Behind the "we're impartial" facade what they're really saying is, "you're going to have to pay us anyway, so why not just use H.264 instead?"

(By the way, I voted you up, I think you summarize their position better than I did.)