To get an Opal apple tree however, you would need a cutting, not seeds. The Opal is across between the golden delicious and the Topaz, and depending on what pollinator was in the orchard, any fruit your saplings produce could be highly variable and may not resemble the apple you ate in any way. It's really not surprising no one was interested in helping you to successfully grow your own Opal trees from seed or otherwise, they are newly introduced and available for sale on a very limited basis - the owner may only be beginning to recover his initial time and investment.

"20 years from the date of filing the application, protects the inventor's right to exclude others from reproducing, selling, or using the plant so reproduced."

I hadn't heard of this before, except in connection with GM corn, where Monsanto prosecutes indigenous dirt farmers in Mexico for keeping their own corn seed to replant after Monsanto's corn in a neighbor's field was so inconsiderate as to send pollen (containing Monsanto's patented GM-modified DNA) wafting over their field pollinating their corn.

With most ornamentals, the plant itself is patented and vegetative propagation is prohibited, but anyone can use the DNA as pollen or seed in their own hybridizing programs. Maybe that's changing now. After all there's so much money to be made here ... maybe it's a response to all those bogus Ebay sellers offering seeds of blue roses ... yeah they're overreacting in your case. But as you say, no one's come out to repo your seedlings.

Apples are hugely variable in the wild, that's why all commercial and garden apples are vegetatively propagated. I'd heard that if you go see wild apples growing in their native habitat, somewhere in central Asia, that you wouldn't necessarily recognize them all as being apple trees because some are tall, some are bushy, some are practically prostrate like you describe your seedlings as being.

Also, Malus seeds do not breed true, so you will almost certainly end up with bad tasting apples (think apples that taste like wood or cotton). At best you have a 1/200 chance of getting a seed that produces an acceptable product.

Not worth bankruptcy, years in prison, convicted felon status, etc. to me for fruit that is inedible...but hey, perhaps God will save you.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PA LL&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=PP15963.PN.&O S=PN/PP15963&RS=PN/PP15963

"In the case of a plant patent, the grant shall include the right to exclude others from asexually reproducing the plant"

The key word here is "asexually" generally referring to grafting or rooting. A seed is form of sexual reproduction and not covered by plant patents.

Also, patent infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal one.