"I don't use "wikipedia", although I am sure it has value in some areas such as childrens' book reports and so forth. The point is that you can get a lot of "free information" on the net --- but when you are dealing with serious legal concepts and your investment dollars, it is always best to be sure that you are consulting a truly authoritative source."

Is the good professor not a "truly authoratative source"?

http://picker.typepad.com/legal_infr...

Randal C. Picker

Leffmann Professor of Commercial Law, University of Chicago
Director, John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics
Senior Fellow, The Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory

Randal C. Picker currently teaches classes in Antitrust, Network Industries, and Secured Transactions, along with co-teaching a seminar on The Legal Infrastructure of High-Tech Industries. He also co-runs The Law and Economics workshop. In prior years, Professor Picker has taught Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganizations, Commercial Law and Civil Procedure. Next year, he and Professor Lichtman will teach a new course, Technology, Innovation and Society.<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O />

Randy Picker graduated from the College of the University in 1980, cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts in economics and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He then spent two years in the Department of Economics, where he was a Friedman Fellow, completing his doctoral course work and exams. He received a masters degree in 1982. Thereafter, he attended the Law School and graduated in 1985 cum laude. He is a member of the Order of the Coif. While at the Law School, Mr. Picker was an associate editor of the Law Review. After graduation, Mr. Picker clerked for Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He then spent three years with Sidley & Austin in Chicago, where he worked in the areas of debt restructuring and corporate reorganizations in bankruptcy.

Mr. Picker is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, vice-chair of the legislation committee and served as project reporter for the Conference's Bankruptcy Code Review Project. He is also a commissioner to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and served as a member of the drafting committee to revise Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code.

Professor Picker is probably best known for his work Game Theory and the Law, co-authored with Douglas G. Baird and Robert Gertner.

His recent research has focused on the Federal Trade Commission’s case against Intel, and in particular, the role of cross-licensing of intellectual property. He has also extended his analysis of game theory and the law by incorporating agent-based computer simulations.

Recent Publications and Working Papers:

• Regulating Network Industries: A Look at Intel
  23 Harvard Journal of Law & Economics 159 (1999) (click for prepublication draft)
• Perfection Hierarchies and Non-Temporal Priority Rules
  74 Chicago-Kent Law Review 1157 (1999) (Symposium Issue on Revised UCC Article 9) (click for a prepublication draft)

Courses:

• Antitrust Law
  This is a basic course on antitrust law, with special emphasis on how modern technology might challenge traditional antitrust principles. Topics include Rule of Reason vs. per se analysis, analysis of joint ventures, predatory pricing, as set forth in more detail in the syllabus.
• Network Industries
  This is a course in the regulation of natural monopoly, both physical and virtual. The course examines basic issues in the public and private creation of network industries, such as the railroad, the telegraph, the electricity transmission grid and the telecommunications grid, before turning to modern virtual networks, such as the Microsoft operating system. We consider the constitutional dimensions of rate of return regulation, practical issues in rate design, such as incentive-based regulation, two-part pricing, and Ramsey pricing. We also examine in detail the modern approach to unbundling networks, as seen under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the Energy Policy Act of 1992. We close with a look at the regulatory issues of the Internet, including domain name organization, open access to cable lines, and regulation of B2B marketplaces, all as set forth in more detail in the syllabus.
• The Legal Infrastructure of High-Technology Industries
  This seminar, taught with Mr. Lichtman, examines a wide range of legal and technical issues, each tied to one of eight topics, most of which are either intellectual property topics or antitrust topics.

Be well