clone

n. 1. An exact duplicate: Our product is a clone of their product. Implies a
legal reimplementation from documentation or by reverse-engineering. Also
connotes lower price. 2. A shoddy, spurious copy: Their product is a clone
of our product. 3. A blatant ripoff, most likely violating copyright,
patent, or trade secret protections: Your product is a clone of my product.
This use implies legal action is pending. 4. [obs] PC clone: a
PC-BUS/ISA/EISA/PCI-compatible 80x86-based microcomputer (this use is
sometimes spelled klone or PClone ). These invariably have much more bang
for the buck than the IBM archetypes they resemble. This term fell out of
use in the 1990s; the class of machines it describes are now simply PCs or
Intel machines. 5. [obs.

