ST.22 Revision task force report

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

2. Task force achievements >> Proposal for the ST.22 revised standard ready >> Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG prepared

3. 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…)

4. 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

5. Task force achievements >> Proposal for the ST.22 Revised standard ready >> Answers to questions raised at the last SDWG prepared

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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_typesize.htm?once=true& • Chapter 11 of http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/ • http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/feb99.asp • http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/text.htm

12. Conclusion • The task force proposes the document at http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=12446for 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.

13. Conclusion >> 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)

14. Conclusion >> Questions?