The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section may not be prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Some printing devices are configured with a feature known as “locked printing” to provide control over the printing of electronic documents. When the locked printing feature is enabled and a print job is sent to the printing device, processing of the print job is deferred until a user enters authentication data at the printing device and the authentication data is verified. The authentication data typically includes a user ID and/or password, although many different types of authentication data may be used. A user conventionally enters the authentication data through an operation panel on the printing device and the printing device verifies the authentication data. Once the authentication data is successfully verified, the printing device allows the print job to be processed, i.e., allows a printed version of the electronic document reflected in the print job to be generated.
One of the problems with conventional locked printing approaches is that a locked print job can only be processed at the printing device to which the print job was originally sent. Users cannot print locked print jobs at other printing devices. This can be very inconvenient, for example, in situations where a printing device cannot currently process print jobs for any of a variety of reasons. For example, a printing device may not be able to currently process print jobs because the printing device has exhausted a supply of consumable resources, such as paper, toner, staples, other finishing materials. In these situations, users must wait for the depleted consumables to be replenished before their print job can be processed. As another example, the printing device may not be able to currently process print jobs because an error occurred at the printing device, such as a paper jam or a mechanical failure.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds