Clone processing with embedded widgets

This may get consigned to the bin due to me not looking deep enough into the code but it seems to me that when a widget is cloned the only _id that is discarded is the master top level widget. I can't seem to find a recursive clone of sub items. Would it be true that widgets within the the widget being cloned retains the original _id ? It may explain why I get lots of locked messages after a copy operation when editing rich text, etc! Maybe you could clarify what is going on in the clone functions ?