Legally -- implicit in your comment are unstated assumptions about what is copied from the implementation. Suffice to say -- I disagree that a so-called "clean room" implementation is always required re: software published on the internet, or that the act of simply reading GPL code taints one forever, re: that code. The reason why is the reason why reading a book does not taint one forever and prevent one from writing one's own book -- "You should have used a while loop instead of a for loop here, now you're going to copyright prison." See, and pay close attention to the "Merger Doctrine": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea–expression_distinction

It's my view that copyright is a rather weak IP protection, and GPL-type advocates have misconstrued the law of copyright for years, especially "derivative works". Mostly because they've been misinformed about the law by mendacious FOSS leadership cough like the FSF and SFC.

Now I'd agree with you, if there is something especially clever/creative about the GNU implementation that the reimplementation copies, that might be an issue, but again, even then, it seems especially rich for a reimplementation to find fault with another reimplementation.

You might also take a look at another comment of mine re: some aspects of this matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38164958