Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Hillary Clinton has criticized Barack Obama for ``lifting whole passages'' in his speeches, an act her campaign has called plagiarism. The Illinois senator says the charges are ``silly,'' and intellectual-property experts agree.

Obama, 46, says he used ``two lines'' that were given to him by his friend and campaign co-chairman, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Just days before the Wisconsin primary last week, Obama was attacked for comments he made Feb. 16 to counter repeated claims by Clinton, 60, that he was offering ``false hopes'' to voters by favoring rhetoric over substance.

Experts consulted by Bloomberg News sided with Obama. They dismissed the uproar as political banter and mundane compared with questions over authenticity in past political cycles.

``I don't think he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar here,'' said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Oxford University who studies intellectual property and isn't affiliated with a campaign. ``I think silly season is a more accurate description of the situation.''

``From a legal view, the allegations of plagiarism were preposterous,'' said Charles Sims, a First Amendment and copyright attorney at Proskauer Rose LLP in New York. ``The amounts here are totally trivial and not a legal issue. There would be no claim whatsoever.''

To accuse Obama of stealing ``two lines by somebody who is a colleague of yours is almost like saying you're plagiarizing from your speechwriter,'' said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington who was a speechwriter for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

`Promises' vs. `Solutions'

The Clinton campaign has cited instances of Obama echoing Patrick to attack what she has described as his preference for ``promises'' over ``solutions.'' Obama used passages from speeches in which Patrick quoted Martin Luther King, the Declaration of Independence, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy to argue that oratory could be a transformative force.

```I have a dream.' Just words,'' Obama said at a Feb. 16 Wisconsin Democratic Party dinner in Milwaukee. ```We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.' Just words. `We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words.''

Kennedy

```Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' Just words,'' Patrick, 51, said Oct. 15, 2006. ```I have a dream.' Just words.''

Obama also used a line from a speech Patrick made when he, too, was dogged by accusations that he offered style over substance.

``I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me, I'm asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations,'' Patrick said during his 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial run.

``I'm not just asking you to take a chance on me, I'm also asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations,'' Obama said Nov. 2, 2007.

Long before the controversy erupted, Obama acknowledged that he had taken lines from Patrick.

``In the end, don't vote your fears, I'm stealing this line from my buddy Deval Patrick,'' Obama said in a Dec. 21 speech in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. ``Don't vote your fears, vote your aspirations. Vote what you believe.''

Debate

In response to a question in a Feb. 21 Texas debate between the two rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton defended and renewed her campaign's charges.

``If your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words,'' said Clinton, a New York senator. ``Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox,'' she said, as members of the audience booed.

``The notion that I had plagiarized from somebody who was one of my national co-chairs, who gave me the line and suggested that I use it, I think, is silly,'' Obama, who has won 11 consecutive nominating contests, said to applause.

Charges of plagiarism have been leveled with more justification at politicians in past campaigns, with one of the most celebrated cases involving Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, when he ran for the 1988 Democratic nomination.

Biden

Biden was forced out of that race after he borrowed lines from British Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock without attribution. He also ran last year, though he dropped out after barely registering in the January Iowa caucuses.

Hess said Clinton may have learned a lesson of her own about what constitutes plagiarism in the Internet era. Adviser Howard Wolfson pointed to her closing remarks in last week's debate as the moment she ``retook the reins'' and showed why she is ``the next president of the United States.''

``You know, the hits I've taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country,'' she said.

Those words closely tracked language that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, used in a 1992 campaign ad.

``The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits that the people of this state and this country are taking every day of their lives,'' Bill Clinton said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 25, 2008 00:09 EST