Well they certainly paid the old boy's mortgage for some years.
He was part of a team and thus his "royalties" are only small. A few hundred dollars when they use the bits he has a share in the patent of are paid to his estate. I don't know how these things work but the US law is different anyway.
It seems a bit like a tontine as the team members slowly die off. Presumably last man standing would get more but the widows do seem to get something out of it.
He had a number of patents on different parts of the processes he was instrumental in developing but his main employment was as R&D Director so a lot of his work was owned by the company. He only patented privately developed stuff. When he got word that the company that employed him was to be taken over he and a couple of other directors patented some of the work that they had been doing in their own names and when the inevitable redundancy arrived he was sitting pretty. The new owners were forced to employ him as a consultant for some years and then he went "private".
Industrial chemistry does seem to be lucrative ~ pity I was useless at chemistry at school
