Patent ID: 8416466

Claim:
An image reading apparatus, comprising: an image reader configured to read a manuscript with a margin on at least a portion thereof, the margin including a mark having a long side and a short side making an oblique angle therebetween on at least a portion thereof; a storage unit including a command storage unit configured to store therein characteristic information of the mark including at least information about the angle of the long side with respect to the short side of the mark and information about an orientation of the mark, positional information of the mark, and a command specifying a processing on the manuscript in an associated manner; and a control unit includes: including a margin determining unit configured to detect a corner of the manuscript and search a region from the detected corner to an image portion of the manuscript in a direction toward a center of the manuscript to determine the margin of the manuscript read by the image reader, a mark detecting unit configured to detect at least one mark matching the characteristic information of the mark from the determined margin of the manuscript determined by the margin determining unit and acquire the characteristic information of the detected mark, a positional information determining unit configured to detect coordinates of the detected mark on the manuscript and determine the positional information of the detected mark from the detected coordinates, a command searching unit configured to search the command storage unit for a command associated with the acquired characteristic information acquired by the mark detecting unit and the determined positional information determined by the positional information determining unit using the acquired characteristic information and the determined positional information as search keys, and a command executing unit the configured to execute a processing specified by the searched command searched by the command searching unit on the manuscript, and the mark includes a hand-written mark.