The problem of reward for innovation is one that goes back a
long ways under the market / capitalist system.
The tale of the unrewarded genius is legion, one set of substantiation is presented in Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms looking at key inventors of the early Industrial Revolution: John Kay (flying shuttle), James Hargreaves (spinning jenny), Richard Arkwright (spinning frame), Samuel Crompton (spinning mule), Reverend Edmund Cartwright (power loom), Eli Whitney (cotton gin), and Richard Roberts (power loom, machine tools).
Of the list, Kay, Hargreaves, and Roberts died in poverty. Crompton and Cartwright were granted substantial payments by acts of Parliament (£5,000 and £10,000 respectively), Whitney made money through arms sales to the U.S. government, and of the lot, only Arkwright earned significant wealth, half a million pounds, after his patents stopped being honored by other manufacturers.
Invention and information goods fare poorly in economic systems.
Most of us are coloured by the experience of Microsoft from 1980 - 2000 or so, but what is generally not recognized is that Microsoft as a seller of "shrink-wrap" software was exceptionally anomalous. Most other pure-play software firms were nowhere near as profitable as Microsoft. Some technology companies had large revenues, but they were often based on hardware (Sun, HP), professional services (Oracle, Price Waterhouse), or both (IBM). Hardware does well, but has a small fraction of the profit margin of software, and professional services -- brains by the bucketful -- is very difficult to scale. Companies which do well at the latter almost always have a distinctly mafia-like reputation (IBM, EDS, Oracle, PWC, Accenture, etc.).
Werner's situation is unfortunate, and I really do hope he finds a way to survive. He's hardly alone, and frankly, the proprietary commercial model has proven highly problematic as well.