MS Windows 'borrowed' alot from Mac's UI, and nowadays most smart phones are copying iPhone's concepts. I feel the hidden interest in this thread is more on Chinese/China bashing rather than intellectual property.
Did Windows clone the Mac UI right down to the color and pixel and then replace the Apple logo? I think the bashing here is well-deserved, above and outside the discussion of whether China has a demonstrated economy of copying (it does). Also, there's a special place in hell for people who can't just come out and call a clone a clone.
I agree with your first paragraph, but "a special place in hell"?
While this example is a little extreme in its similarity with the original, copying a startup idea and implementing it in another market than an English speaking is not just done in China. Here's an article about a bunch of european startups doing the same: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-do-ebay-facebook-and-gro...
I've often wondered if one of the (many) reasons why there are so few successful startups coming out of Europe is due to the copying. I visited Berlin a while back and my buddy was telling me about a bunch of guys who've built a successful business (dozens of engineers) just cloning 'hot' American products. It's got to reduce the number of people working on brand new ideas. (I'm not suggesting that you can't build a…
Heh, that may be a factor, but I doubt it's the main one. Lots of American HN users seem to be pretty Liberal in their political outlook, and that's fine. But consider Germany, with a welfare state that looks after you from cradle to grave. If you want to start a startup there then you'd better have your EUR 20,000 in capital minimum, and you'd better do all the paperwork and comply with all the regulations and have the right certificates and diplomas... The activation energy is just so much higher in Europe, two guys hacking in their garage can't just go for it without a lot more preparation. If you fail you won't starve of course, the State will look after you but that's a two-edged sword - not only is it harder to get started, there's less hunger to succeed, and everyone will be used to working only 35 hrs/week...
One wonders if the likes of Google and Microsoft employed Kai-Fu Lee so that he would be less inclined to fund / promote clones of their products in China.
These copy cat sites (and similar ones in Europe) are an interesting test to the "idea" vs. "execution" argument. I bet that there are other nearly perfect clones of Tumblr in China yet this one has risen to the top. I'm sure Kai-Fu Lee is looking beyond the ideas and at teams behind them.
Cloning might not be the most ethical way of building a product but clearly DianDian identified a market that wasn't being served in China and had the ability to bring a product to that market.
I love that the discussion of cloning was happening on "Zhihu, a clone of Quora".