The implementation of clone() in Object checks if the actual class implements Cloneable, and creates an instance of that actual class.
So if you want to make your class cloneable, you have to implement Cloneable and downcast the result of super.clone() to your class. Another burden is that the call to super.clone() can throw a CloneNotSupportedException that you have to catch, even though you know it won’t happen (since your class implements Cloneable).
The Cloneable interface and the clone method on the Object class are an obvious case of object-oriented design gone wrong.