That's a straw man argument. That's not what they did. They had a search engine with data (lots of it), using many of the same factors that Google does (page/domain authority, on-page markup, etc). The feed that algorithm a lot of data. One bit of data they feed it is search behvior of toolbar users (presumably ALL search engines).
In your scenario, that'd be a copy. In the reality scenario (described above), I think it's not.
search behvior of toolbar users (presumably ALL search engines)
The situation is even less compelling than this. There's no evidence to suggest it's not the complete navigation behaviour of toolbar users, not just when they're on search engines.
Ironically, you are refuting as a straw man a proposition I never made. I have never claimed Bing did that.
I just highlight the fact the way they get data from google is technically a copy, since it has the capacity to duplicate
the entire google database (which again is not what they are doing).
In your scenario, that'd be a copy. In the reality scenario (described above), I think it's not.