They likely have a patent, although searching "apple snapdragon patent" mostly gets results involving Qualcomm.

Edit: found the patent https://patents.google.com/patent/USPP22228

Apple trees aren’t grown from seed because the offspring will have huge genetic variability and won’t resemble the parent. Instead they take a hardy rootstock species and graft scionwood from the fruit producing trees on to it. Once the apple variety is grown, repeating it without the graft is impractical and you can't just save seed from store bought apples and expect to get the same thing. An entire variety might be cloned from a single tree that produced the best fruit out of hundreds.

For new designer varieties getting commercial access to the grafts usually requires signing contract that you won’t create and sell your own grafts so the creator can control who gets it.

Doubtful?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proplifting