Robert Kearns showed Ford his intermittent wiper, sued for decades, won about $30 million and lost his marriage

Robert Kearns, a college professor, was nearly blinded by a champagne cork on his wedding night in 1953. In 1963 he built intermittent windshield wipers from off-the-shelf electronic parts and showed them to Ford. He filed his first wiper patent on 1 December 1964. Ford learned how the system worked, offered no licence, and stopped talking to him by 1965. Ford put its own intermittent wipers on cars from 1969. In 1976 Kearns took apart a commercial wiper system and found what he believed was his design. He had a nervous breakdown. He sued Ford in 1978 and Chrysler in 1982, often acting as his own lawyer, with several of his children helping prepare the cases. His marriage to Phyllis, with whom he had six children, ended in divorce in 1989. In November 1990 Ford agreed to pay $10.2 million and drop its appeals. In June 1992 a Detroit jury found Chrysler had infringed and awarded $11.3 million, which rose to $18.7 million with interest. The Supreme Court declined Chrysler's appeal in 1995. His suit against General Motors was dismissed for missed filing deadlines. He spent more than $10 million on legal fees^†. He died of brain cancer on 9 February 2005, aged 77. The 2008 film Flash of Genius tells his story.