You probably heard references to Samuel Slater. He memorized the plans for British textile equipment and brought them to the US. He violated British law, but US law did not mind.
Then there is Eli Whitney, to give an example of an American who enjoyed US patent protection. He patented his cotton gin.
You would want to ask a historian for other examples.
Do you have some examples of this? Because I hear it parroted a lot and yet the only thing people can point to is "but the US stole some designs from Brittain on some early machines" - which is not at all what we're talking about here, and was at nowhere near the scale of China's theft.