Patent ID: 7787158

Claim:
A data processing apparatus comprising: an image input unit that inputs image information of a form, to which form type information is attached; a character recognizing unit that carries out a character recognition process on the image information inputted by said image input unit based on the attached form type information; a storage unit that stores the image information and a result obtained in the character recognition process by said character recognizing unit; a form recognizing unit that carries out a form recognition process on the image information inputted by said image input unit to obtain a form type; and a form type determining unit that determines whether the form type obtained by the form recognition process carried out by said form recognizing unit and a form type represented by the form type information inputted by said image input unit match, wherein said character recognizing unit carries out the character recognition process when said form type determining unit has determined that the form type obtained by said form recognizing unit and the form type represented by the form type information match.