The only defense I can see here is that the programmer who "copied" the code was the one who wrote it for Sun in the first place. He wasn't working from the API

The only defense I can see here is that the programmer who "copied" the code was the one who wrote it for Sun in the first place. He wasn't working from the API spec thrown over the wall, he was doing it from memory. But then that also breaks the whole clean room premise. If was a former Sun employee he should have never been allowed to work directly on the code in the first place.