He found it hilarious that every single equation in the pirated book were reverse images.
[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/behold-the-worlds-most-famous-teap...
Almost any 3D artist doing objects, especially a new category of objects they haven't done before, will do so with 3 or more reference images from every angle and model based on those, pretty tightly initially at least. But even with that, you add your own style and taste into the modeled object, and almost never will say that what you referenced from is the "original object" in that manner.
"Inspired by" works well though and doesn't remove anyone's agency or lessen their "creation" of it :)
If there were a digital city somewhere on the net, accessible to everyone, that would be a great place to put it.
The interiors differ between the original and the reissue. The latter has an integrated ceramic strainer near the spout root not present on these models updated interior geometry.
This listing appears to show a “vintage” teapot with the strainer on photo 8 - so I guess the plot steepens: https://www.ricardo.ch/de/a/melitta-friesland-minden-teekann...