ScanSoft's Capture Development System 12.0 Utilized to Develop Transport-Related Media Coverage Database as Department-Wide Resource

Peabody, Mass. and Ghent, Belgium February 12, 2004 - ScanSoft, Inc. (NASDAQ: SSFT), the leading supplier of speech and imaging solutions, today announced that Ireland's Department of Transport has selected ScanSoft's award-winning Capture Development System v12 to scan and index a searchable database of transport-related media coverage to be used as a resource for the entire department. ScanSoft's Capture Development System is the world's most accurate optical character recognition software development kit, providing organizations with the ability to incorporate fast, accurate OCR and formatting within a host of applications and products.

The Ireland Department of Transport looked to ScanSoft to help create a database that would quickly scan and index the nearly fifty articles per day that need to be processed and made accessible to the entire organization, leveraging their multifunction devices. Using ScanSoft's Capture Development System, the article is quickly recognized, indexed and zoned appropriately - meaning that the heading, date, publication and other searchable information are automatically recognized and placed in the proper field, eliminating clean up and manual indexing. The database is available to all employees as an easy-to-use Web interface and includes all related media coverage and information from across Ireland and the UK.

Ireland's Department of Transport assessed a range of commercial applications, as well as development solutions, but selected ScanSoft's Capture Development System because of the accuracy of its world-leading optical character recognition (OCR) engine and its ability to automatically divide a page into meaningful zones, such as the title of a media article and the body of an article.

"After examining a number of solutions, it became clear that ScanSoft was the only company with the speed, accuracy and formatting requirements to be able to create this application," said Brian Moyne, Project Manager, Department of Transport, Ireland. "With the ScanSoft Capture Development System, we have been able to virtually eliminate the need for manual indexing or data entry, truly enabling us to maximize our return on investment."

"ScanSoft's imaging products are used to create a tremendous range of applications and solutions in a wide variety of industries," said Peter Hauser, senior vice president and general manager, ScanSoft International. "This application with the Ireland Department of Transport demonstrates the breadth of our OCR capabilities, as we look to work to help more organizations to maximize their MFP investments and create versatile solutions that streamline business processes and increase productivity."

About Ireland Department of Transport

The Department of Transport was established by Government in June 2002. The mission statement is: "The Department of Transport will underpin Ireland's economic growth and competitiveness and contribute to social development through the efficient and effective delivery of a sustainable, appropriately regulated, safe and integrated transport system." For further information on the Department see their website www.transport.ie.

About ScanSoft Capture Development System

Designed for optimal 32-bit application development, the ScanSoft® Capture Development System is everything a developer needs to quickly add sophisticated imaging, recognition and PDF capabilities to commercial and in-house software applications and is used in the leading commercial applications that support imaging and OCR, including Autodesk® Raster Design, Canon® imageWARE®, Cardiff TELEform®, FileNET Panagon™ Capture, Kofax® Ascent Capture®, Microsoft® Office XP, Microsoft SharePoint®.

About ScanSoft, Inc.

ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT) is the leading supplier of imaging, speech and language solutions that are used to automate a wide range of manual processes - saving time, increasing worker productivity and improving customer service. For more information regarding ScanSoft products and technologies, please visit www.ScanSoft.co.uk.

Trademark reference: ScanSoft and the ScanSoft logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release that relate to future plans, events or performance are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including risks associated with market trends, competitive factors, and other risks identified in ScanSoft's SEC filings. Actual results, events and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements that speak only as of the date hereof.

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