Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Canon Information Systems, Inc.

Hughes Aircraft Company

Canon Development Americas, Inc.

Don Francis Purpura

Michael Lee Yeung

George Koppich

Neil Y Iwamoto

Paul Nicholas Gacek

Tapani Juha Otala

Ravichandran Ragunathan

Douglas Richard Barr

Royce Earle Slick

Don Hideyasu Matsubayashi

Allison Bajo

John D Barnard

Steve Yasuhiro Muto

Stephanie Ann Suzuki

Hye-Sook Kim Lee

Eric Floyd Riggert

Robert D Wadsworth

Martin Martinez

Paul Chen

Craig Mazzagatte

Attaullah Seikh

Wei Zhou

Richard Alexander Wilson, Jr

Tony K Ip

Yokichi Joe Tanaka

Gregory F Beck

Walter D Kuver

Rajini Giridharagopal

Martin Page

William Zhang

Gary M Sach

Sebastien Jean

Osman Ozay Oktay

Elias Montenegro

Katayoun Shoa

Trent Lee England

Bruce K Bromage

Allan Roberto

Bret Hassler

QuocCuong Thong Bui

A print preview is displayed for a printer on a network. A selection of a document to be printed by the printer is accepted, and a request for the selected document is sent from the printer to a remote print preview service. There is a determination of whether the printer supports a native print preview function capable of displaying a visually acceptable print preview on a display unit of the printer. If the printer supports such a native print preview function, the printer requests the remote print preview service to generate a native print preview compatible with the capabilities of the printer and to transmit the generated native print preview to the printer. If the printer does not support such a native print preview function, the printer requests the remote print preview service to generate a print preview for an alternate display device, and to transmit the generated print preview to the alternate display device.

Remote print preview generation

A system and method that provides means for performing peer to peer printing over a network. The system and method allow a user at a client device to print to a virtual printer which sends the printed document to a print device for storage allowing the user to walk up to any print device connected to the network, retrieve the document, and collect a hard copy print of the document.

Requesting print data of a second print device from a first print device

An interface device for interfacing between a networkable device such as a printer and a network, includes a hub and a circuit board, with the hub constructed with plural ports to repeat network transmissions received on one port to all other ports. An isolation switch is provided for controllably isolating the port to which the network is connected so that network transmissions are not repeated by the hub. The isolation switch is operated under control of the circuit board, which implements network functionality for the networkable device. For example, where the networkable device is a printer, the extended network functionality provided by the circuit board may relate to secure printing. The isolation switch can be operated so as to isolate the network from the printer, to permit the circuit board to transmit decrypted print jobs in clear text to the printer without danger of interception over the network.

Interface device with network isolation

The mimicking of network devices in a computing device having first and second network interface cards, the first network interface card connecting the computing device to an external network and the second network interface card connecting the computing device to a local network. The invention includes receiving an incoming message from a client network device residing on the external network, the incoming message being directed to a legacy network device residing on the local network, and determining if the incoming message requires a function provided by an application module residing in the computing device. In the case that the incoming message requires a function provided by the application module, the incoming message is redirected to the application module which performs the required function in response to the incoming message. In the case that the incoming message does not require a function provided by the application module, the incoming message is passed through the local network to the legacy network device residing on the local network.

Network device mimic support

Managing a plurality of printing devices on a network, including detecting a printing device connected on the network, requesting information from the detected printing device, receiving the requested information from the printing device, and creating a print queue for the printing device based on the received information.

Print queue manager

Internet-based printing to a home printer in which the print job is pre-rasterized at the cable head end and sent in rasterized format to the set top box. Because the print job is pre-rasterized at the cable head end, and not at the set top box, resources are not wasted at the set top box when they are more readily available at the cable head end. In addition, because of the high speed communication network already in existence between the cable head end and the set top box, even large pre-rasterized print jobs can be transmitted to the set top box in reasonable amounts of time, meaning more quickly than a situation in which it was the set top box that performed rasterization.

Home printing from internet sources

Printing over a network, such as the Internet, by uploading, via the network, to a printing service provider, print data information and location information, determining identification information based on the uploaded location information, correlating, at the printing service provider, the determined identification information with the uploaded print data information, inputting the identification information at a printing device connected to the network, transmitting the print data information having the correlated identification information to the printing device, and printing the print data information on the printing device. The location information may be a network address from which the uploading step is initiated, where the network address is dynamically determined by a hotel server when a user connects a computing device to a network connection in the hotel. After the uploading step, the printing service provider may query the hotel server for the identification information, with the hotel server determining the identification and transmitting the identification information to the printing service provider in response. The location information may comprise hotel information and the identification information may comprise hotel room key information or credit card information.

Internet printing by hotel guests

Securely storing a public key for encryption of data in a computing device by using a user-specific key pair which is securely stored in the computing device, including receiving a target public key corresponding to a target device, obtaining a user-specific key pair from a secure registry, using a user-specific private key from the user-specific key pair to create a target key verifier based on the target public key, storing the target key verifier and the target public key in a storage area, retrieving the target key verifier and the target public key from the storage area, applying a user-specific public key from the user-specific key pair to the target key verifier for verifying the authenticity of the target public key, and encrypting data with the target public key, if authenticity of the target public key is verified, thereby creating encrypted data for transmission to the target device.

Secure printing with authenticated printer key

A data storage and reproduction system is provided using a computer network that comprises a server, at least one attachment unit that is coupled to the server and first and second reproduction devices. The server storing data to be reproduced. At least one attachment unit comprising means for interfacing with a portable memory device having a reference to the reproduction data. The first reproduction device capable of performing a first data reproduction of the reproduction data and the second reproduction device capable of performing a second data reproduction of the reproduction data, the second data reproduction being different than the first data reproduction. A rule processing means for processing a rule set to determine whether the reproduction data satisfies selection criteria of the rule set, wherein the at least one attachment unit requests the reproduction data from the server for use by the reproduction device, if the reproduction data satisfies the selection criteria.

Rule-based data reproduction system and method

Secure printing of print data from a client application residing on a data network to a set top box which has a printer, the set top box residing on a digital cable network which has a cable head end for interfacing the digital cable network to the data network, wherein print data is generated in the client application after which it is determined whether a secure communication path exists between the client application and the set top box. If the secure communication path exists, the print data is transmitted from the client application to the set top box. The print data is then sent from the set top box to the printer for printing.

Secure printing over cable network to home printer

Managing a plurality of network devices on a network, including detecting an address assignment message sent from an address server over the network to a network device, the address assignment message containing an assigned address corresponding to the network device, sending an information request message, in response to the detection of the address assignment message, over the network from the network management device to the network device, the information request message containing the assigned address corresponding to the network device, receiving information, in response to the information request message, from the network device, and creating an entry corresponding to the network device in a device management directory, the entry containing the assigned address corresponding to the network device and the information received from the network device.

Discovery and management of network printers

Push printing from internet sources to a set top box through a cable head end connected to the set top box by a digital cable network. Push printing includes printing by unicast (point-to-point) printing from a remote internet source to a specifically designated printer connected to a specifically addressed set top box, multicast (one-to-many) printing from a single remote web source to multiple ones of printers connected to respective set top boxes, and one-to-group printing from a single remote web source to a group of set top boxes defined at the cable head end. Both unicast and multicast printing are accomplished from the remote internet site to a cable head end connected to the internet, with the cable head end transmitting the print job via a digital cable network to subscriber set top boxes. Notification of print status is provided from the set top box back to the cable head end, thereby allowing the cable head end to provide notification of successful printout back to the remote internet site.

Internet-based push printing over cable network

A software architecture for printing to a home printer via a cable television communication network includes complementary clients and servers executing on each of the internet components participating in the internet-based printing. A client executes at the remote internet-based site that originates the print job, and transmits the print job to a complimentary server at the cable head end. A server at the cable head end spools the print job and preferably converts the print job into a format more suitable for a next-downstream device, such as a cable set top box. The cable head end further includes a client which transmits the print job from the cable head end's server to a server at the set top box. The server at the set top box spools the print job to an attached printer. Preferably each of the clients and each of the servers is nearly identical to all other clients and servers, and each communicates to other applications including client applications through a consistent and uniform application programming interface.

Software architecture for cable television home printing

Growing community of inventors

Yorba Linda, CA, United States of America

Don Francis Purpura