TI definitely did not have a monopoly on ICs for those 25 years. Those first patents were on Kilby's process which was essentially abandoned. Fairchild and Inte

TI definitely did not have a monopoly on ICs for those 25 years. Those first patents were on Kilby's process which was essentially abandoned. Fairchild and Intel did a tremendous amount of work getting ICs to be more useful over that timespan (see self-aligned gates).