“Vaccine makers have not yet agreed to do what Merck is doing.” Kinda/ sorta. They aren’t doing it directly, but Moderna “… has reiterated on several occasions that they will not enforce their intellectual property during the pandemic” and WHO is taking advantage of that to fund an African company to reverse-engineer their process: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/10/19/1047411856/the-great-vaccine-bake-off-has-begun Pretty interesting if you ask me, the more people with the tech the better in general.