"They found that it wasn't novel enough to count as a new invention, though. So really, Salk's vaccine was never patented because it was never eligible for a patent, according to Jane S. Smith, who sifted through the March of Dimes' archives for her book "Patenting the Sun."[1]
[1] https://curiosity.com/topics/jonas-salk-didnt-patent-the-pol...
And of course, you can defensively patent something and then not enforce the patent too...
That's the same point I made in the above post (albeit through the mechanism of free licensing vs. non-enforcement).
"They" is important because it wasn't self-funded research.
"There was near unanimity within the organization that the public had already paid for the polio vaccine through their donations"[1]
And it wasn't just the March of Dimes. The funding bodies also knew it wasn't patentable. It's not much of a logical leap for Salk to have been part of that discussion and likely had the same conclusion.
"is that legally it was thought to be unpatentable. The National Foundation and the University of Pittsburgh, where much of the work was done, had looked into patenting the vaccine."[2]
It's not meant to disparage Salk. I doubt he would have chosen to patent it even if it was possible. But, like I stated in the previous post, he was never faced with that decision. There's better examples of corporate altruism (some of which are already mentioned in this thread)
[1]https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/the-real-reasons-jonas-...
[2]https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-polio-vacc...
The article makes it sounds like a more institutional decision not to move forward, which I think is rather different than attempting to spin a refusal into good personal PR.