Are you saying Mistral didn't invest a lot of money in discovering the invention this patent covers? I'd bet they'd say otherwise. How is the patent office supposed to tell the difference?

I don't think a "pay-to-play" system works. There's already trade secrets that allow corporations to invest lots of money in protecting things that aren't even inventions. You just seem like you're trying to figure which patents are good or bad. But if a patent is widely infringed, by the same kind of logic, it must have tremendous value as an invention.