Not having a patent doesn’t _prevent_ you from bringing your invention to market, it just accelerates _someone_ bringing it to market, and that’s a net good for society if the invention is useful, no?
I get that people don't like patents because they sometimes get abused, but on the whole I think we wouldn't have a lot of the things we take for granted if they didn't exist.
This is where the patent system shines. Because he got a patent he could shop around, sell it to a company which made a tidy profit on it. He didn't need to raise capital to establish a factory and all that to bring it to market and the company buying it seriously got ahead without spending an inordinate amount of money and time inventing the thing.