Steve Blank has been in the StartUp world for decades, just check his about page: http://steveblank.com/about/

And compare it to the author you're talkin about http://www.ashmaurya.com/about/ that clearly states in his page "In late 2009, I ran into into Steve Blank’s lectures on “Customer Development” from where I followed the trail to Eric Ries’ early ideas of the Lean Startup."

I seriously doubt Ash would have ever written "Running Lean" if it weren't for Steve. The whole notion of the "lean startup" emerged partly as a result of the influence of Steve Blank's work, on Eric Ries and others. Of course it would make sense that there would be overlap between the work of Ash and Steve (and Eric and others as far as that goes) but I very much doubt that Steve's book is in any way a "ripoff" of the book Ash wrote.

Except it seems to have been published before Ash Maurya's.

Emphatic no!

The seminal work from which Ash's book (and mine) sprung was The Four Steps to the Epiphany, published in 2005.