In all the places I have looked on the web it appears that of the two leading 2d codes (QR-Code and Datamatrix) QR seems to be the dominant code in the 'market place'.
Denso Wave who are a ¥42.6billion company in Japan with a 15% of stocks held by Toyota, specialise in automation, inventory control and scanning systems. In all the mention that I have seen of the matter it is stated that while they hold the copyright on QR scanning codes they are not enforcing it.
While this appears an altruistic move on the face of it, it is obviously not the same as putting the copyright into the public domain. At any time in the future they could in theory decide that they do want to enforce their copyright and pursue all the people who are using QR Codes as part of their business work flow.
I think all of us here on the QR Code forum feel that QR Code agree going to be the next 'big thing' and I certainly thing they are suggest some interaction just bursting to happen but maybe things are not so rosy as we think?