His wife Marion continued his suits. Unlike Armstrong she was willing to compromise. She settled with RCA for over a million dollars, then went after other companies like Sylvania and CBS that had also infringed his patents. She conclusively won all her cases and collected millions, although the last holdout, Motorola, didn't give up until the Supreme Court ruled against them in 1967, thirteen years after Armstrong's death. According to Armstrong's biographer, Lessing, true innovation is always the work of individuals or small groups.
Radio is built around seven inventions made by only nine people.
Plastics are based on the work of five independent scientists, four German and one American, and only the last, Wallace Carrothers, did significant work within a company, Du Pont. Atomic energy is the work of a small group of refugee Europeans. Innovation is lightning in the brain, and that doesn't happen in committee meetings. According to ads that Microsoft ran recently in the Wall Street Journal, a country's true innovators are its companies. It's an extraordinary claim, especially from a company not known for innovation.