Dyson Vacuum Cleaners.

One sole inventor who developed 5,127+ prototype designs and clearly brought something unique to the marketplace. Gave his whole life and money to the product.

Almost immediately after it came out Hoover copied the design and basically would have put him out of business.

The patents were the ONLY thing that protected him from a huge multinational who didn't invent anything.

Now Dyson went on to invent a whole range of very cool gadgets which never would have existed without patents.