How to copy properties from one Java bean to another?

I have a simple Java POJO that I would copy properties to another instance of same POJO class.

I know I can do that with BeanUtils.copyProperties() but I would like to avoid use of a third-party library.

So, how to do that simply, the proper and safer way ?

By the way, I'm using Java 6.

I guess if you look at the source code of BeanUtils, it will show you how to do this without actually using BeanUtils.

If you simply want to create a copy of a POJO (not quite the same thing as copying the properties from one POJO to another), you could change the source bean to implement the clone() method and the Cloneable interface.