No, Spyderco owns the patent on the circular thumb hole. Rather than using an oval or the like to get around the patent Benchmade does the right thing and compensates Spyderco for their use of Spyderco's patent.
While that's true I also went through two straight G10 scale Spydercos (One a Para 2 in fact, and the other a Native 5) that shipped with clip screws too short to fully thread into the steel liners underneath the G10 scales. Their customer service responded quite poorly to the issues and I still have a bad taste in my mouth from it. If I were to buy a new G10 handle Griptilian I'd have no doubt that it'd be be good to out of the box and stay that way. I've lost such confidence with Spyderco.
I agree that Spyderco's FRCP itself and the texture they mold it into feels better than Benchmade's Valox and the texture they mold it into. On the other hand, the base model Griptilian has a roughly 2/3 length polished steel sub frame under the plastic, full length brass thread inserts molded in, a solid steel clip, and 154CM blade. Spyderco's most comparable model, the base version of the Manix 2 LW has an unlined plastic handle, a wire clip secured by single through handle post screw, and the blade is CTS-BD-1.
It's really hard to get a true apples to apples comparison between the brands.