Exactly the point. New projects are somehow trying to innovate the old ideas that another project have been trying to do but with a different approach adding up some spice on which they add up some genetic idea on how the execution to resolve the problem must be done but turns out to be the same thing and the added idea was not used because the general idea still is credited on the first project who have presented the idea.
New projects nowadays tends to innovate old ideas which is like recycling the thought and just having mixed up with new ideas of them but the aim is still focusing on the same thing. Yes, that was indeed impressive to come up into an improvement of the idea but targeting the same problem attacking it on the same strategy seems to become generic on the approach of new projects. If they really want to come up into a better idea, just make the first project a preference but do start from scratch and attack with a different approach because doing the same thing that the older project did seems to be a copyright to them and you just inserted your idea which can turn out to end on the same manner.