Good morning shiners! As to all this back and forth over who .... hurt who, knock it off. Plenty of other places to selectively pull partial quotes out to defend some position on an absolutely minor issue. For those offended by the opinions of others, remember, opinions are like

holes,everybody has one.
There's stuff that gets rave reviews here that I've tried and thought they sucked. Doesn't make the racers or me right, that's just how it is. Same goes the opposite, things Iike others don't. But adults accept that without feeling offended, especially if you're not the designer, manufacturer, invested money in the manufacturer, or they're a relative.
As to clones, how many here own an Android phone and love it? You're using a clone. Apple came out with a smartphone and Google jumped on board using Chinese factories to make phones to compete. AMD in your PC as more affordable with good performance? You're using a clone. They run the same instruction set as an Intel x86 processor, which came out first, and run the same Win OS as most Intel based pcs do.
As to a comparison to high end cars, I've owned them. IME no one has successfully cloned a Ferrari. Even if you build a kit car with the same body, the engine, transmission, and drive train will never be the same. FT won't be carrying it.
In every single industry, advances are made through iterative changes to existing designs to slowly improve performance, design, and meet customer demands. If you had paid attention in high school electricity 101 aall we freaking use is a simple circuit you should have learned about. You have a battery, a switch, and a resistor sitting between the positive and negative poles. Ever mount a resistor on a breadboard on your Heathkit radio? Postless deck. Setting up a bench demo with alligator clips? Clamp style deck. Same for 2 posts with screws on top. I'll give you that a Velocity deck was pretty original.
As to innovation? What's so great about doing a design people never saw before that it is labeled innovative just because it's different? Innovative means a jump in design that markedly improves performance. Difference just for the sake of difference alone isn't innovative, it's a styling change to make something tempting to buyers. Were fins on cars innovative? Sure they were different, but they didn't do anything and once all the car makers used them they fell out of favor and a new design came along to tempt buyers back in the showroom.
So let's leave this holier than thouw sniping out of here. Show me something that gives me a noticeably better vape and I'll call it innovative, even if it does resemble something that came before it and this new one perfects the concept and design. And high price or limited availability doesn't equal innovation or impress me. Blow my socks off with performance and I don't care if it's mass produced cheap or handmade super expensive. And these things aren't Bugattis. They're a piece of metal that hold a wire in place. Using it to vaporize a solution with nic in it was innovative. Everything else since has been iterative improvements on what came before.