for others who are interested on the details on how to perform the deepclone here is the code: objid refers to the viewport object id
If (objId.ObjectClass.DxfName.ToUpper = "VIEWPORT") Then
Dim id As ObjectId = newLayout.BlockTableRecordId
Dim idcol As New ObjectIdCollection
idcol.Add(objId)
Dim idmap As New IdMapping
acCurdb.DeepCloneObjects(idcol, acCurdb.CurrentSpaceId, idmap, False)
End if