[onion2k]

the original designers would end up on the streets

They've already made their money during the time they had the patent, so I imagine they'll not be on the streets in any literal sense. Also they have much more experience of successfully selling their product, so they could iterate to a new, better version.

[bitL]

Usually the main creative engineers that developed those products didn't really make big $, instead sold their companies before bankruptcy to bigger players that then made some bucks off them by economy of scale, product synergies etc.