The recently popped up clean room implementations of software, along with the video game decomp/recomps, make me believe this is the case. That would mean only those with significant legal representation/protection are safe (big corporations, institutions, govt and military). Protection comes from applying strong legal force through TOS and a favoring law environment. Also means the big players can strongarm taking ideas from individuals without recourse, which is already happening right now, just going to be even more onwards.
Protection of law in this way, I believe stops at the national borders (e.g the Chinese cleanrooming US software would be safe), so I do expect this clean room trend to be a war of attrition at the nation state levels.