Patent ID: 7796817

Claim:
A computer-readable recording medium that stores therein a computer program for recognizing an overlapping character which is overlapped with a pattern, the computer program causing the computer to execute: estimating, when a character string that includes an overlapping character is input from outside, a position of a pattern in an image of the overlapping character; removing the pattern from the overlapping character image based on estimated position of the pattern; specifying a character region in the overlapping character image from which the pattern has been removed; extracting a region corresponding to specified character region from the overlapping character image before removal of the pattern as a target region to be subjected to character recognition; creating a reference image to be compared with the overlapping character image by adding an image of the pattern to a character image stored in advance based on the estimated position; and recognizing the overlapping character by comparing a feature of an image in the target region with a feature of the reference image.