I’m not going to spend a lot of time listening to a pope who doesn’t know the distinction between a copyright (which protects Disney and other producers of written works or performance art) and a patent (which has been wildly successful in encouraging drug companies and medical device manufacturers to constantly innovate and improve their products knowing they can (temporarily) reap the rewards of doing so).
Due to the lengthy regulatory process required to bring drugs to market, the average length of patent protection in the U.S. is only 11-12 years http://www.innovation.org/documents/File/Pharmaceutical_Patents.pdf
In reality, most pharma companies already do provide deep discounts for life-saving drugs sold in poor countries. If we want the supply of new life-saving drugs to continue, the solution to lack of affordability is not to short-sightedly abandon protection of intellectual property, but instead strengthen it.
Think of it this way: poor African countries survived thousands of years without new lifesaving Drug X. The patent system requires them to wait 10-11 years, after which such countries have free access to all the intellectual property underlying Drug X and are free to produce it at no cost to their citizens if so desired.
In contrast, by removing patent protection entirely, such countries may NEVER receive the benefits of this life-saving product, since no one will have the incentive to invest the $1 billion average cost that it takes to bring just 1 new drug to market. Does the Pope really think the world would be better off under the latter arrangement?
Yeah. The patent protects the huge investment the original drug company had to make to develop the product, non of which the copycat drug makers have to spend.