Biography
Matthias Leistner is Professor of Private Law and Intellectual Property Law, with Information and IT-Law (GRUR Chair) at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich. He studied law in Berlin, Brussels, Munich and Cambridge. Ph.D.-studies at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law Munich; Dr. iur. (s.c.l.), LMU Munich 1999. Master of Law (LL.M.), Trinity Hall College, University of Cambridge 2004. Habilitation (Post-doc thesis), LMU Munich 2006.
Matthias was Head of the Commonwealth Unit at the Max Planck Institute. From 2007-2016 he was Professor of Civil Law, Intellectual Property Law and Competition Law and Director of the Institute for Commercial and Economic Law at the University of Bonn. Apart from his Chair at LMU Munich, at present, he is a Director of the Munich Unified Patent Court Advanced Research Center at LMU, a Member of the Faculty of the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC), and was a guest professor for European Intellectual Property Law at the University of Xiamen, China, and at the Tongji University, Shanghai. He was a Short Term International Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School, New York City, in the Spring Term 2020 and a Visiting Scholar at the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU Law School in the Spring Term 2023, 2024, 2025 & 2026. In July 2023, Matthias Leistner was offered the position of Director of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich. He declined this offer in May 2024 and decided to stay at LMU Munich Law.
His specialties are IP law (in particular patents and copyright), unfair competition law, AI and data law. He has published 7 books and more than 200 articles in these fields and has been consulted by various government departments and non-governmental organisations as well as international institutions, such as the EU Commission and Parliament and other. Most recent research works focus on German and European patent law (including the Unitary Patent Court System) as well as on the regulatory challenges of AI for innovation law and regulation. He has acted as an IP and civil law expert in proceedings before various courts and arbitral institutions in Germany, England, France, the U.S. (both, State and Federal Courts as well as the ITC) and Asia, including the CJEU, the Unified Patent Court (UPC), the German Federal Constitutional Court, the German Federal Court of Justice, the Higher Regional Courts in Duesseldorf, Mannheim and Munich as well as the High Court of England and Wales. He is a Member of the Executive Board of the German Association for Intellectual Property Law (GRUR) as well as its Committees on Copyright Law and Data Law. He is editor of the leading German IP journal Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht (GRUR) as well as a member of the Editorial Board of GRUR-Patent, co-editor of a commentary on German unfair competition law, and the standard commentary on German copyright law (Schricker/Loewenheim/Leistner/Ohly, Urheberrecht, 7th edition 2026).
His most recent publications are available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2742264.
