Comment by FireBeyond

Relatively few that got to court.

While some farmers certainly did as you described (and while personally I disagree with the whole concept, leaving that aside for now), others just caught wind drifted seeds on their land.

The issue was that Monsanto et al would often put the onus on small farmers to prove they didn't deliberately breed the seed. Being civil, the issue became more "balance of probabilities" versus "beyond reasonable doubt". When you have Monsanto's army of lawyers, and a "generous" offer to "settle" for a licensing fee and agreement to purchase, then many of those small farmers rolled over. Often the ones that ended up in court were those who did actually have either sufficient resources, or were sufficiently pissed off to "stand their ground".