As a designer i can tell that we all know your shit gets copied and improved real quick. That gratification of “getting the credit you deserve” is a thing very very very little designers and engineers get to enjoy. The enjoyment comes from YOU knowing you started it and ofcourse telling people your story.
I hope to bring some innovation to the geardrive market the coming weeks, ive been working for two years on it and im finally getting the parts. Im very exited, but i know that whenever i release it, somebody else will improve on it and sell a better or a similar version in about 3 months. Which is imho good, because then i can check why the other made certain decisions i havent thought of.
I made a shitton of cool designs (if i say so myself 
) for a very wide amount of fields already, yet i never get the credit, the company i work for does. And thats rare aswell, usually the customer gets the credit for “making” it and you bet your ass they are not going to say “hey but actually mr. Bavioze made the design” BUT when everyone hates the design you bet your ass they are pulling that shit “hey i know it sucked, but it was actually mr. Bavioze who did it”. Making and designing things is a very very ungrateful job.
This is just my experience with the thing you are talking about. I did not want to pull it towards myself here, just that its understandable why you are angry and i promise you many people have been burned like this so let me tag them for you.
@Ean.esk8 got his geardrive designs stolen by meepo the second he put them out.
@Gamer43 made an antispark for flipsky they didnt pay him for.
@Savage1 after people noticed the tkp craze meepo etc just made tkp boards.
@RipTideSports i bet Brad had his own share of bushing bashing troubles (just a hunch)
@XBoard feels like his glove designs are stolen.
@hummieee got his deck design copied.
@Tony_Stark put in massive research (costs) for other eskate vendors to sell the motors with his research cheaper not mentioning him.
@Venom121212 got his soapy bathwater tub designs stolen and resold.
@MBS i remember that a certain company bought mbs boards, swapped their own composite decks (cough) and sold the leftover boards supplied, undercutting mbs by some margin.
@Trampa (apparently) got their hubs copied by sunmate, let alone straight up copies on whay they believe is their product name “vesc”
@moon had his own share of problems.
@rey8801 lets not forget he was one of the first to think of the “hammock” system for adjustable baseplates
@ boosted basically got their designs ripped off
@ evolve their design philosophy has been copied more than boosteds now.
@IDEA has his designs being copied.
We are all riding to this day on copied dimensions from caliber 2 trucks, which then i believe are copied from paris trucks.
These are just some recent things at play that i can remember.
And let me add actually that my design of wheels would not have been possible without the help of both @surfnacho and @moon these guys helped me without their own benefit and made a huge improvement in my engineering skills.
Im till this day still thinking about the misunderstanding between me and @surfnacho where i did basically the dick move (by accident).