I’m supposed to be doing other things, so I’ve just set up a rule like that, created a document without a text layer, set the scope to “databases” and tried it out. The following rule works for me:
OCR Apply does not create a new file for me - it does exactly what the quotes attributed to Jim and Criss in your post suggest it should do.
I’m sorry, that’s probably not very helpful other than suggesting that this may be a problem attributable to an exception rather than a bug affecting everybody. That might mean that opening a support ticket is the way to go.
When you trigger the smart rule by moving a document from the global inbox to a database, do you see the info area (bottom left of the DT window) display a message suggesting that OCR is being performed?