This behavior is intentional and how formats are designed to work. It helps to remember that the format cannot 'see' the part, assembly, drawing, or anything else. It is a stand-alone object with no dependencies on any other object. If you create a note in the format, the only thing the note will know to reference is itself. Applying a format to a drawing does not copy these notes into the drawing or change their references. They simply continue to exist in the format and display the same thing everywhere. Notes in formats are really only useful for static text or information about the format itself.
Tables are different. These get copied from the format into the drawing, and function as if they had been natively created in the drawing. This means the table is able to reference information from both the drawing and the models contained in the drawing. The drawing has references to its models, so it can display information from them. The format does not. Hopefully that makes sense.
