Right now I believe the plan is for SiDock to fund much of the expensive part once they have a very strong candidate. They are already doing some wetlab work for example.

There is no patent on the drug, that is kind of the point, it is designed to be patent free. The results of SiDock's research are published in an open-source manner. Any company that wants to could then manufacture and sell the drug, but obviously they can’t price gouge since any other small drug manufacturer could come along and undercut them. As you can imagine, there would be quite a big market for a potent, shelf-stable anti-viral for covid, particularly if it had a better side effect profile than paxlovid. Paxlovid is also quite expensive, if an alternative anti-viral was available, the competition would bring down Paxlovid's price, which would be a win for everybody.