On the other hand, if Microsoft themselves are publishing this code as open source, on the open, on one of the most important projects out there, and are actively asking other experts from other companies to review it, I would imagine they are weakening their arguments on the potential litigation.
Only for copyright claims. Patent claims are not diminished by publishing items and asking for review. We can see this in the various video codec and other standards that publish a bunch of info that is covered extensively by patents.
