Footprints Poem Leads to Authorship Suit

A religious poem that adorns coffee mugs and T-shirts worldwide may now inspire a court battle, the Washington Post reports. A Long Island man has filed suit claiming that his mother wrote the inspirational work, "Footprints in the Sand." At least a dozen others have claimed authorship of the poem, which has raked in millions of dollars in merchandising.

Margaret Fishback Powers, a Canadian poet, says she wrote the poem as a teenager. Self-proclaimed poet Carolyn Joyce Carty claims to have scribbled it down in 1963, at age 6. But last fall, one literary sleuth traced elements of the poem to an 1880 sermon, raising the possibility that no one person penned "Footprints." (More copyright stories.)