It's an old concept that "the system [of property]" has a hard time fighting:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/absentee-owner.asp

Think about what allows the toxic management company to thrive, eg, by becoming the principal (part of it is an identity problem I pointed to in sibling comment)

The garden hose example is a good faith scenario but maybe it still feels icky to you because they arent the "genuine inventors" :)

How are they going to prove that? Put up a diff tree of their improvements?