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Rip off seems like a very strong term to use (it implies something unscrupulous). Could you provide some supporting information?
Google 'created' Cardboard which is an exact knockoff of the research done 2 YEARS ago by USC (it even won an award then at IEEE VR).
Everything old is new again.

Cardboard stereoscopes were very popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Here's a patent for one from 1902, for example: http://books.google.com/books?id=2jN9AAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA849&ots=...

That's what Google Cardboard is; a stereoscope, traditionally used for viewing static 3D images (a left and a right, e.g. this meta stereogram of a woman looking through a stereoscope: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stereograph_as_an_edu... ), instead being used for a dynamic 3D image courtesy of a cell phone. You could literally tape any modern cell phone to any 150 year old stereoscope and you'd have Google Cardboard, or USC's equivalent.

(Personally, I backed the Poppy on Kickstarter, which is made of nice plastic: http://www.poppy3d.com )