To hear Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) tell it, his brief foray into the cookie business in the late 1970s gives him a leg up on the concerns of small-business owners. Earlier this month, the Democratic presidential candidate introduced his small-business program with vignettes from his own cookie-making experience.

Yet all that experience kind of, well, crumbles, in the mind of David Liederman, another cookie entrepreneur. Liederman, the founder of the David\ufffds Cookies chain, claims Kerry ripped off the idea from him.

\ufffdThe bottom line is he just stole it from me,\ufffd said Liederman, now a restaurateur and real estate developer in the New York City suburbs.

The Kerry campaign sharply dismissed Liederman\ufffds charge.

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\ufffdSome guy who called me up was John Kerry, in \ufffd79 or \ufffd80,\ufffd Liederman recalled. \ufffdHe said he wanted to come down and talk to me about franchising. He came to the office and said he had an incredible space in Boston, which was Faneuil Hall. He said he needed some plans and some layouts and all sorts of things to get the approval of the landlord.\ufffd

\ufffdSo I gave him the layout, the package, and he went back and I didn\ufffdt hear from him for six or seven months.\ufffd

Then one day Liederman got a call from someone who said they\ufffdd seen one of his stores in Faneuil Hall. Not having a store in Boston, Liederman decided to have a look for himself.

\ufffdIt was a direct, 100-percent knock off of David\ufffds Cookies,\ufffd said Liederman, from the appliances to the shop\ufffds design to the cookies themselves. \ufffdIf you had walked into a David\ufffds Cookie\ufffds store in Manhattan at the same time he opened \ufffdJohn\ufffds Cookies\ufffd in Boston, you couldn\ufffdt tell the difference.\ufffd