ST.22%20Revision%20task%20force%20report

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ST.22 Revision task force report
SCIT/SDWG/8, March 2007
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Task force achievements

• gtgt Proposal for the ST.22 revised standard ready
• gtgt Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG
  prepared

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Revision of WIPO Standard ST.22

• Purpose of the Revision
• Facilitate the OCR of patent applications to save
  costs and improve publication and search quality
  for the IP community
• Way to achieve
• Adapt the recommendations to the technical
  progresses made in OCR technology in the last ten
  years
• Adopt the revision of the standard
• Actively promote the standard to applicants
  (publication on web sites, fees adaptations)

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Revised standard ST.22 what s new?

• The essence of the standard has NOT changed but
• The scope of application of the standard has been
  precised
• The recommendations have been reformulated with a
  modern vocabulary
• Good and bad examples that illustrate the
  recommendations have been added in a new appendix
• The recommended font size is now 14pts
• Embedded drawings shall be well separated from
  the text lines with wide white margins

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Task force achievements

• gtgt Proposal for the ST.22 Revised standard ready
• gtgt Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG
  prepared

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Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG
meeting

• Question 1 (Paragraph 36 of SCIT/SDWG/7/9)
• The task force shall examine the use of
  non-Latin based characters, so that the standard
  can cover non-Latin character based languages at
  a later stage.
• Two new recommendations have been added to WIPO
  standard ST.22
• (1) mixing Latin and non-Latin characters in
  text paragraphs is not recommended
• (2) for texts in the Chinese language, the Song
  font is recommended

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Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG
meeting

• Question 2 (Paragraph 37 of SCIT/SDWG/7/9)
• The SDWG also mandated the Task Force to examine
  the optical character recognition (OCR) accuracy
  rate (currently better than 98.5) to see if a
  higher accuracy rate should be specified.
• Currently, the recommended minimal accuracy rate
  for searching is 98.5. The task force proposes
  to raise the recommended minimal accuracy rate in
  average to 99.5 in order to obtain a better
  quality for the search. (This still represents in
  average 15 errors per page). Search engines
  should also work with similarity in order to
  compensate the OCR errors.

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Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG
meeting

• Question 3 (Paragraph 38 of SCIT/SDWG/7/9)
• The task force shall take into consideration
  what font styles and font sizes should be
  recommended for optimizing readability, for
  screen presentation and for OCR.
• For OCR, the answer can be found in paragraphs
  number 31 and 33 of the proposed revised Standard
  ST.22.

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Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG
meeting
Question 3 Extract of revised ST.22 31.The
minimal recommended font size is 12 points, 14
points being preferred. As a general rule, all
characters of a paragraph should have the same
font size. 33.The recommended fonts are the
following in order (a) Monospaced family
OCR-B, Courier New (b) Serif family ITC
Officina Serif, Times New Roman (c) Sans Serif
family Verdana, ITC Officina Sans ,
Arial However, the Arial and Times New Roman
fonts are not recommended for applications
containing chemical and/or mathematical formulae,
as well as acronyms mixing letters and digits.
For Chinese characters, the Song font is
recommended.
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Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG
meeting

• Question 3
• Concerning screen presentation
• No strong recommendation for a preferred font
  style.
• Larger fonts (like Verdana) may have a small
  subjective advantage over narrow fonts (like
  Times New Roman).
• The recommended font size for screen readability
  depends on the resolution of the screen and on
  the age of the target audience.

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Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG
meeting

• Question 3
• For more details, please refer to the following
  studies
• http//hid.fidelity.com/q22002/fonts.htm
• http//desktoppub.about.com/library/howto/ht_types
  ize.htm?oncetrue
• Chapter 11 of http//www.usability.gov/guidelines
  /
• http//www.humanfactors.com/downloads/feb99.asp
• http//psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/text.htm

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Conclusion

• The task force proposes the document at
  http//www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meetin
  g_id12446 for promulgation by the SDWG.
• The task force proposes to remain active in order
  to gather in more details recommendations for
  non-latin languages, follow up the application of
  the revised standard and report about it and
  analyse any further proposed changes to the
  standard.

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Conclusion

• gtgt I would like to thank the members of the task
  force for their active contributions
• Elisabeta Balbaie (Romanian Patent Office)
• Bruce Cox (United Stated Patent and Trademarks
  office)
• Katja Daubert (German Patent and Trade Mark
  Office)
• Ramona Dumitrache (Canadian Intellectual Property
  Office)
• Matthias Guenter (Swiss Federal Institute of
  Intellectual Property)
• Gennady N Egouliev (Federal Institute of
  Industrial Property, Russian Federation)
• Long Ning (Chinese State Intellectual Property
  Office)
• Nygren Patrik (European Patent Office)
• Rob Wills (Intellectual Property Office
  Australia)

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Conclusion

• gtgt Questions?