Patent ID: 8589416

Claim:
A form identification apparatus comprising: a memory; and a processor, the processor functioning as: a form registration unit that stores stylized forms as registered forms in the memory, and associates with each of the registered forms a type of form processing to be performed on the registered form and a degree of difference threshold based on the type of the form processing in the memory, wherein the registered forms are a plurality of forms associated with one of types of form processing to be performed on the registered forms and one of degrees of difference thresholds based on the one of the types of form processings; a difference degree computing portion that respectively compares an input form to the registered forms and determines degrees of difference between the input form and the registered forms based on results of the comparing; a candidate registered form extracting unit that determines whether the degrees of difference between the input form and the registered forms are less than the degree of difference threshold, extracts from the memory, as a candidate registered form, at least one registered form among the registered forms in response to determining that the degree of difference between the input form and the registered form is less than the degree of difference threshold, and, if a plurality of candidate forms having the degrees of difference less than the degree of difference threshold are extracted from the memory, causes a display device to display the plurality of candidate forms for selection of one of the plurality of candidates forms displayed on the display device as the candidate registered form; and an execution unit that executes for the input form a form processing associated with the candidate registered form.