Direct copy, is possibly too strong of a term, modified copy possibly fit better. Reading over them (with nuch nausea really, very dry reading.) It's like someone hit copy and paste then realized they were plagiarizing, and changed enough to "make it theire own."I have a lot of comments about the activities of patent offices, and strange things happen there, but if the claims of one patent application were actually identical to an already existing patent or application, they would be rejected by the patent office(s). And then the applicant would have to amend them or give up after some time.
This is the primary role of patent offices, and the people who work there are paid to check the prior art.