That is literally how you innovate! What a lot of people are unaware of is that Europeans had been copying and stealing Chinese secrets for over a millenia:
Hell, even the name America for which we give to the United States today was stolen since America was originally given to "Latin America" named after Amerigo who had only set foot in Latin America.
I was also astounded when I found out how much US brands actually copy each other. So really, there is no shame in copying from others first before innovating, because that's what essentially learning is all about right? I mean we are constantly standing on the shoulder of giants, but for some reason, for certain sectors, we tend to lock out that process.