Even if it had been patented, patents from the 1950s would have long expired. In fact, patents from 2005 would have expired - the US patent term is only 20 years.

Didn't know that, thanks. Although 20 years seems too much for some things, especially computer-related fields that move much quicklier than other fields. But now pretty much everything depends on or runs on computers so 20 years seem too much. I don't know if I phrased it correctly, but I mean to say that before computers, things moved much more slowly. Even a century for a patent would've been fine 500 years ago, but now almost every field has been changed by computers in the past few decades and will change even more rapidly. Letting 1 company have the advantage for 20 whole years now is much more impactful than it must've been before.