Electrophotography – Machine operation – Accounting
Reexamination Certificate
2002-01-29
2004-02-17
Tran, Hoan (Department: 2852)
Electrophotography
Machine operation
Accounting
Reexamination Certificate
active
06694115
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to printing. In particular, the invention relates to systems and methods for selectively altering the configuration of a printing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printing device, such as a printer, typically is capable of exhibiting various attributes and/or features, the combination of which is known as a “configuration.” The configuration of a printing device oftentimes is altered to accommodate user preferences and/or the requirements of a particular print task. For instance, some print tasks are adapted for duplex printing, where both sides of the pages are printed by the printing device. Duplex functionality, however, may not always be enabled by a printing device. By way of example, a user desiring a printing device to exhibit a configuration that includes duplexing, may be required to enable duplex functionality by manually configuring the printing device. Unfortunately, manually configuring a printing device can be labor intensive
Additionally, in some environments, it may be beneficial to provide some users with access to a printing device that exhibits a particular configuration, while denying others such access. For example, it may not be desirable to provide some users with access to a particular print medium upon which a printing device is configured to print. On the other hand, it may not be practical to provide multiple printing devices, i.e., a printing device exhibiting the desired configuration for some of the users, and another printing device exhibiting the desired configuration of the others.
Based on the foregoing, it should be appreciated that there is a need for improved systems and methods which address these and/or other shortcomings of the prior art.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to altering configurations of printing devices. In this regard, a representative embodiment of a print system of the invention includes a printing device and a configuration-enabling system. The printing device includes a first print cartridge that contains a print substance for printing on a print medium and a readable identification tag for providing first information. An identification reader also is incorporated into the printing device. The identification reader is configured to receive the first information from the identification tag so that, if the first information does not correspond to the printing device, the identification reader enables the user to be informed that the print cartridge may not correspond to the printing device.
The configuration-enabling system communicates with the printing device and is configured to receive information corresponding to an authorization of a user. Preferably, the information includes a designation of a first configuration of the printing device that the user desires to enable. The configuration-enabling system also is configured to retrieve information that is adapted to enable the first configuration of the printing device. In this manner, the printing device can be enabled to exhibit the first configuration.
A representative embodiment of a method of the invention for altering a configuration of a printing device includes: receiving information corresponding to an authorization of a user, the information including a designation of a first configuration of the printing device the user desires to enable; and enabling the printing device to exhibit the first configuration in response to receiving the information.
A representative embodiment of a computer readable medium of the invention for use with a printing device includes: logic configured to receive information corresponding to an authorization of a user, the information including a designation of a first configuration of the printing device the user desires to enable; logic configured to retrieve information adapted to enable the first configuration of the printing device; and logic configured to enable the printing device to exhibit the first configuration by using the information retrieved.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4994853 (1991-02-01), Fukuchi et al.
patent: 5250984 (1993-10-01), Masai
patent: 5694222 (1997-12-01), Yamada
patent: 5959530 (1999-09-01), Lupien, Jr. et al.
patent: 5999766 (1999-12-01), Hisatomi et al.
patent: 6188851 (2001-02-01), Eom
patent: 6549732 (2003-04-01), Yoshizaki et al.
Hewlett--Packard Development Company, L.P.
Tran Hoan
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