In an illustrative case, poet A portrays hope as a lamp guiding a traveler through darkness. Poet B retains the same images, sequence and conclusion but substitutes synonyms for “lamp” and “night.”
These are verbal substitutions; the underlying representation and reasoning remain substantially unchanged. The substitutions alone do not establish an independent invention.
If poet B reworks the image in a substantially new setting and draws an additional, meaningful inference, the analysis must also evaluate the quality of that creative recasting.