There is no much additional risk for those companies.

If they're already paying MPEG LA fees then even if VP8 is found to infringe MPEG LA patents, they are covered.

Most of the companies that would entertain adding VP8 hardware codec already have H264 codec, hence pay the fees.

The companies that don't pay MPEG LA fees, can start paying them.

The important thing to know is MPEG LA sells a bunch of patents. They don't care if they're used in implementing H264 codec or VP8 codec.

MPEG LA fees are relatively low and not a problem for companies like Texas Instruments.

The people who are really affected by those patents are startups, small companies, open-source developers etc.