Companies / Data vendor
Woongjin Booxen
Korean e-book distributor that supplied e-books to a national AI corpus project without the rights holders' licence and lost the resulting copyright case in 2026. Recorded here: 4 public prices.
South KoreaLatest record 24 Jul 2026
Public prices involving Woongjin Booxen
- Total damages awarded on appeal to 78 rights holders of Communication Books titles copied into the National Institute of Korean Language written corpus (Woongjin and Woongjin Booxen), 2026
About 62 percent of the roughly 5.5 million won claimed. Separate from the 2023 settlement between the Korean Publishers Association, the National Institute of Korean Language and Woongjin Booxen, whose amount was not disclosed.
Press report, Bizhankook, Woongjin loses AI copyright lawsuit (5 August 2026)
약 344만 원 (about 3.44 million won)total award (78 rights holders)
- Per-title damages the Seoul Central District Court (appeal) set for e-books copied without permission into the National Institute of Korean Language written corpus, 78 rights holders of Communication Books titles against Woongjin and Woongjin Booxen, 2026
A court-set price for unlicensed use of a book in a training corpus: 3.5 times the e-book list price per title, times each plaintiff's share; the court held the use was not fair use. The appeal upheld a first-instance ruling of February 2025. The judgment itself was not read.
Press report, Bizhankook, Woongjin loses AI copyright lawsuit (5 August 2026)
전자책 정가의 70%에 인쇄 부수 5부 (70% of the e-book list price, times 5 copies, times the plaintiff's share)per title, as a multiple of the e-book list price
- Per-title settlement Woongjin Booxen set with the publishers whose Bookopia e-books it used without permission in the National Institute of Korean Language written corpus (an AI and language-research corpus), Korea, 2022
A formula, not an amount: about 2.1 times the e-book list price per title. Woongjin called it a settlement of fees, not compensation. Seoul Shinmun (26 August 2022) reports 6,194 of the 15,993 disputed titles were settled at the level paid to publishers under formal contracts.
Press report, Kyunghyang Shinmun, opinion column by culture researcher Lee Yung-hee, 13 September 2022
전자책 정가의 70%의 3copy (70% of the e-book list price, times 3 copies)per title, as a multiple of the e-book list price
- Korean government (National Institute of Korean Language) written-corpus collection project: total project cost over the 20,053 published works the contractor used from 1,226 publishers, 2019
A buyer paying a vendor to assemble a corpus, so the cost covers processing as well as rights; only 4,060 works were licensed from their publishers, and 15,933 Bookopia e-books were used without consent (later settled, see the related Korean rows). Bizhankook reports the contract required at least 80% of the fee to go to copyright clearance.
Press report, Seoul Shinmun, Woongjin Booxen infringed copyright in 16,000 titles (26 August 2022)
총 사업비는 30억 9000만원 (3.09 billion won) for 2만 53종 (20,053 works)per project of 20,053 works
Cite this
AIData.Broker, “Woongjin Booxen in the AI training data market”, reviewed 24 Jul 2026. https://aidata.markets/companies/woongjin-booxen
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 if you credit AIData.Broker and link to this page. Each row names the publication that stated it, and words quoted from a source keep that source's own terms.