Wiring together a clock chip, a battery compartment and a display hardly makes you a genius.
That's not what he did. He didn't build a clock from spare electronic components or even put one together using an off-the shelf kit: he literally cracked open the plastic case of a commercially produced off-the-shelf alarm clock and threw the electronic components into a pencil case. Nothing was improved or even modified.
He didn’t even do that though. All he did was remove the “guts” from the 70’s era clock and put them in a suitcase container. What do you call plagiarism when making faux homemade clocks with the appearance of a suitcase bomb? Copyright infringement?