ABBYY
Back to Newsroom

ABBYY USA and scanR Form Strategic Technology Licensing Partnership

March 28, 2006
ShutterStock

FineReader Recognition Technology Expands Camera Phone and Digital Camera OCR Capabilities for Business Users

 

ABBYY today announced that it has formed a strategic technology licensing partnership with scanR, Inc. through which scanR will use ABBYY FineReader Engine SDK technology as the base OCR engine in its new service that turns camera phones and digital cameras into portable scanners, copiers and faxes.

 

ABBYY is a leading provider of recognition, data capture and linguistic technologies. scanR uses advanced imaging and grammar processing technologies to convert paper into useful digital information. With its new service, scanR subscribers simply snap a photo of a whiteboard or document, send it to scanR, and receive a searchable PDF in email.

 

"There are numerous possible applications for this technology," said Harvey Spencer, Principal, Harvey Spencer and Associates. “A 4-megapixel camera can capture a 240 x 240 dpi image of a letter-sized page, which, with a little post-processing, can yield accurate OCR results. This makes a camera a very useful device for adhoc and mobile business applications.  Converting the pages into searchable PDFs or text expands the applicability – one example, field capture of single page documents combined with photographs, such as an accident claim. But not only can the captured pages be placed into an electronic workflow system, this opens up other opportunities.”

 

“scanR helps people organize, search and share information that was previously locked in paper, which is still the vast majority of personal information. Our service enhances camera images, processes OCR results into keywords and adds metadata tags, turning paper into useful digital information,” said Chris Dury, Vice President of Marketing for scanR. “To that end, we wanted an OCR technology that delivered accuracy and scalability for low-resolution images, and found it in ABBYY FineReader.”

 

“scanR’s cutting-edge service showcases new ways to leverage OCR technology, and ABBYY is pleased to continually provide new functionality, such as digital camera OCR, in our recognition engine for such emerging technologies,” said Dean Tang, President and Chief Executive Officer of ABBYY USA. “This partnership represents collaboration in the growing field of digital camera OCR that adds functionalities to transform these gadgets into mobile document capturing devices but, more importantly, to make businesspeople more efficient and productive in and out of the office.”

ABBYY FineReader Engine

ABBYY FineReader Engine is a software development kit (SDK) for integrating ABBYY recogni­tion technologies into new or existing applications. Unlike any other offering in this class, FineReader Engine offers developers access to core-level technologies in both data capture and document conversion within a single environment.

About scanR

scanR enables camera phones and digital cameras to scan, copy and fax. Using scanR, people can turn paper into useful digital information in a few simple steps. The scanR service cleans photos of whiteboards and documents, extracts and tags keywords, and delivers the results as a PDF file in email or as a fax. scanR is currently free and has thousands of users located around the world. More information is available at scanR.com.

About ABBYY

Connect with us