Comment 8 for bug 220521

Besides the fact that Inkscape does not fully support SVG <symbols>: This is the same issue as with normal clones (created by Inkscape): bug #169120 (clones are pasted as invisible orphans and not unlinked from their original if the original is not part of the clipboard selection).

Both attached sample files use clones (<use> elements) of <symbol> elements which are stored inside a group in the <defs> section and not included when copy&pasting the visible content into a new document. Only if the group containing the <symbols> is moved inside the top-level group that is copied to the clipboard, the glyphs are visibly rendered in the new document after pasting.

Reproduced with Inkscape 0.48+devel r9640 on OS X 10.5.8.

AFAIU this is a duplicate of bug #169120.