Caere Announces Cooperative Business Relationship with Canon, Alliance Involves Continuing Development of OmniPage Pro J; Caere to Manage all Sales and Marketing Efforts in Japanese Market

Business Wire, Nov 6, 1996

LOS GATOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 6, 1996--Caere Corporation (NASDAQ:CAER), the leader in optical character recognition (OCR) and the developer of OmniPage Pro, the world's leading OCR software product, today announced its cooperative business relationship with Canon Inc., an industry leader in professional and consumer imaging equipment and information systems. The first result of the alliance is OmniPage Pro version 6.0J, a new generation of Japanese OCR software for Windows.

The relationship involves the introduction and continued development of OmniPage Pro J, and leverages Canon's technology with Caere's marketing and sales expertise to deliver the product to the Japanese market. OmniPage Pro J will be the first Japanese OCR product to provide the kind of speed, ease of use, and accuracy that Caere offers to the rest of the world with its family of OmniPage OCR products.

Under the business alliance, Canon and Caere have worked together to finalize development of Canon's Japanese OCR technology. Canon has provided the core OCR technology and application, and Caere has provided usability enhancements borrowed from its OmniPage Pro OCR product that is recognized for ease of use.

The relationship identifies Caere as responsible for all sales and marketing aspects of the introduction and support of OmniPage Pro J. The state-of-the-art Japanese OCR application was announced today in Japan and the United States in a separate press release by Caere. OmniPage Pro J is expected to be available in November.

"The Canon/Caere alliance represents an innovative approach to the development and marketing of PC software in Japan," said Larry Lunetta, senior vice president of sales and strategic partners at Caere. "The goal is to reach mainstream customers worldwide with OCR solutions. This requires locally-developed, leading-edge technology combined with the marketing, sales and support skills that Caere has developed in delivering millions of units of its OmniPage family of products around the world."

As the growth of PCs continues in Japan and with the proliferation of scanners, Canon and Caere believe the market for OCR and other scanning solutions is now ready for rapid growth. The companies also anticipate developing products and markets for other Asian countries as those areas mature over the next several years.

"Canon has invested many years in developing the OCR application and Japanese language recognition capabilities," said Ichiro Endo, Canon's Director, Chief Executive of Product Development Headquarters. "Caere is the world's expert in Roman character recognition and in understanding the customer and how to present OCR capabilities to them so they are understandable and easy to use. This is a formula for market leadership."

The Company

Caere Corporation, with U.S. headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif. and European headquarters, Caere GmbH, in Munich, Germany, is the leader in OCR technology and a leading developer of desktop form processing and document management products. Caere's products include the OmniPage and WordScan lines of OCR software that convert printed and faxed documents into electronic text; the PageKeeper line of Windows based document management software that effortlessly retrieves a wide range of information from virtually any source; OmniForm, which converts paper forms to electronic format; the M/Series high-speed, high-volume OCR hardware and software for commercial applications; and a broad array of OCR and bar code readers that accelerate transaction processing.

The Company notes that the above projected product shipments and fulfillment of contractual obligations are forward-looking statements that are subject to change based on numerous factors including, but not limited to, work stoppages, engineering delays, quality assurance testing delays, the scheduling of orders, changes in operating systems, a significant change in the competitive environments, and timely delivery by component suppliers.

Trademark References: Caere, OmniPage, PageKeeper, and WordScan are registered trademarks, and TruePage, AutoOCR Toolbar, OmniForm, and M/Series are trademarks of Caere Corporation, in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft Windows and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, in the United States and/or other countries.

CONTACT: Caere Corporation

Patrick Crisp, 408/395-5148 ext. 2049

patrickc@caere.com