Patent ID: 8422075

Claim:
An information updating apparatus capable of communicating with an external apparatus storing at least text data extracted from image data, image feature amount data extracted from image data, resolution information of image data, and color information of image data, the information updating apparatus comprising: a receiving unit configured to receive image data and acquire identification information uniquely allocated to each image data from the received image data; an acquiring unit configured to acquire image feature amount data from the received image data; an inquiring unit configured to inquire of the external apparatus whether identification information being the same as identification information acquired from the received image data is stored in the external apparatus, and, if it is found that identification information being the same as the identification information acquired from the received image data is stored in the external apparatus, to acquire, from the external apparatus, resolution information and color information corresponding to the identification information stored in the external apparatus; and a comparing unit configured to compare resolution information and color information acquired from the received image data with the resolution information and color information acquired from the external apparatus and, if an amount of information of the resolution information and color information acquired from the received image data is larger than an amount of information of the resolution information and color information acquired from the external apparatus, to replace the image feature amount data stored in the external apparatus with the image feature amount data acquired from the received image data and replace text data stored in the external apparatus with text data extracted from the received image data.