Hajo Michael Holtz

Teacher and researcher at the Unit for Commercial Law, Department of Business Administration. Programme coordinator for the one year Master´s Programme in International and European Law and Business.

Areas of expertise: market law, intellectual property law and IT law; research interests: infair commercial practices, data protection and copyright.

Background in Germany with education from the UK and work experience as a German lawyer, legal counsel and manager within academia.

My educational background is from Leibniz Universität Hannover (first legal state examination and PhD) and the University of Edinburgh (Master of Laws, Commercial Law). I completed the practical part of the legal education (second legal state examination) in the state of Lower Saxony in Germany. Since 2013, I have been active as a teacher and researcher in Sweden and I have worked in various positions and with various assignments, including managerial assignments. Between 2010-2012 I worked as a German business lawyer at an international law firm in Berlin (Noerr) and as legal counsel at a fintech company in Stockholm (Klarna).

As Senior Lecturer, I mainly work with students in commercial law, business administration and systems science. Currently, I am the program coordinator for our new interdisciplinary Master's program in International and European Law and Business, which is a unique combination of the subjects of business administration and commercial law.

My primary research interest is market law and unfair commercial practices (marketing law). More recently, I have expanded my research to include data protection law and copyright law. The new European IT law, digital business methods and the digital single market are now my main interests. Many previous research projects have dealt with the exploration of business methods and phenomena in the new digital landscape, such as links on the internet, influencer marketing or data sharing. I have a particular interest in all matters relating to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Due to the importance of EU law in these areas, my research regularly has EU law elements (EU law's impact on Swedish law). My background in Germany also influences my research in such a way that, when necessary, I make comparisons between the German and the Swedish legal situation. In my latest project, I have described IT law as a coherent field and the results have been published in the form of the book "Swedish and European IT law" (2024) via Norstedts Juridik. The book focuses on commercial IT law and also touches on the latest developments at the EU level, i.a. the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, the Data Governance Act, the Data Act and the AI ​​Act.