Even before any of the vaccines were finished, there were plans to not grant them any patent protection so they can be produced and distributed as widely as possible. Gates and his foundation lobbied hard against that and instead came up with the bullshit plan to have rich countries buy vaccines for poor countries, which helped no one but the insane profits of the pharma companies. In the case of the vaccine developed with public funding by the Oxford University, Gates actively talked them out of releasing it with an open license, so they sold it to AstraZeneca instead.