A writer from Albany, NY has filed a federal lawsuit against Chelsea Clinton for $150,000 on claims of copyright infringement after she allegedly stole his idea when she published her children’s feminist novel She Persisted, the Daily Mail revealed on Tuesday.
Christopher Janes Kimberley, 56, who is a little-known children’s writer, claims he sent his book idea, entitled A Heart is the Part That Makes Boys And Girls Smart, to the president of Penguin Young Readers US, Jennifer Loja, in May 2013.
Yet rather than pursuing his version, Kimberley alleges that Loja passed on the idea to Clinton, who stole the idea when she published her New York Times bestseller She Persisted in May this year.
Kimberley’s claim is based on his book containing 15 quotes and stories from prominent female figures such as Helen Keller, Harriet Tubman, and Nellie Bly, while Clinton’s book also centers on quotes and stories from 13 historical female figures, including three of the same people mentioned in Kimberley’s initial version.
“The appearance of impropriety is striking,” the lawsuit claims, adding that Clinton’s work amounts to an “unauthorized reproduction of [Kimberly’s] work.”
“I did months of painstaking research on my book. Her version looks like a ninth-grade homework assignment,” Kimberley told the New York Post. “I am in disbelief.”
The book’s name, She Persisted, was a nod to a meme adopted by the feminist movement after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used the phrase against Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren after she used unparliamentary language when expressing her objections to the nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.
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