In the case of the main example (fidget cube) that's pretty much what's happening, from what I've seen. As their kickstarter campaign went viral, several clone

In the case of the main example (fidget cube) that's pretty much what's happening, from what I've seen. As their kickstarter campaign went viral, several clones started being offered on aliexpress and the like. They are flat out clones, look just like the original and (AFAIK) there's not some common ancestor here that they're both copying, it's a case of Antsy labs had the original design and that got cloned. Antsy labs have been aware of the knockoffs and have actively been trying to prevent them (to little effect from what I've seen) and as it mentions in the article there is a patent pending on Fidget cube. The problem for the Kickstarter creators is that they're basically slower to market than the clones, and in many cases the consumer doesn't really recognise the difference (if you look at twitter etc you can see quite a few people angry about "bad quality" fidget cubes they've received which turn out to be knockoffs)