Plot summary

On his wedding night in 1953, an errant champagne cork rendered college professor of engineering Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear) almost completely blind in his left eye. A decade later, happily married to Phyllis (Lauren Graham) and the father of six children, he is driving his Ford Galaxie through a light rain, and the constant movement of the wiper blades irritates his troubled vision. The incident inspires him to create a wiper blade mechanism modeled on the human eye, which blinks every few seconds rather than continuously.With financial support from Gil Privick (Dermot Mulroney), Robert converts his basement into a laboratory and develops a prototype he tests in a fish tank before installing it in his car. He patents his invention and demonstrates it for Ford researchers, who had been working on a similar project without success, but won't explain how it works until he hammers out a favorable deal with the corporation. Impressed with Robert's results, executive Macklin Tyler (Mitch Pileggi) asks him to prepare a business plan detailing the cost of the individual units, which Robert intends to manufacture himself. Considering this to be sufficient commitment from the company, he rents a warehouse he plans to use as a factory, and forges ahead. He presents Ford with the pricing information it requested along with a sample unit, then waits for their response. Time passes, and when nobody contacts Robert, he begins placing phone calls that never are returned.Frustrated, Robert crashes a Ford dealers convention at which the latest model of the Mustang is unveiled, promoting the intermittent wiper as a selling point. Realizing the company has used his idea without giving him credit or payment for it, Robert begins his descent into a despair so deep he boards a Greyhound bus and heads for Washington, D.C., where he apparently hopes to find legal recourse. Instead, Maryland state troopers remove him from the bus and escort him to a mental hospital, where he is treated for a nervous breakdown. Finally released when doctors decide his obsession has subsided, he returns home a broken man determined to receive public acknowledgment for his accomplishment. Thus begins years of legal battles, during which time he divorces his wife and becomes estranged from his children, all of whom eventually support him in a trial in which he represents himself after he decides attorney Gregory Lawson (Alan Alda) is not representing his best interests. Offered a $30 million settlement, with no admission of wrongdoing on Ford's part, Robert decides to leave his fate in the hands of the jury, who determine Ford's infringement was not deliberate but award him $10.1 million and the right to claim his invention as his own. He later sues the Chrysler Corporation and wins an $18.7 million judgment against them.