If he didn’t, one of the several other 2D barcodes would have caught on. I see non-QR ones around pretty often, though usually in industrial applications.

I remember back around 2009, there were a few of these in the newspaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Capacity_Color_Barcode

I don’t know how well it worked given the loose color registration. I didn’t have anything that could read them at the time.