The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 18, 2006
Filed:
Sep. 29, 2000
Yoji Serizawa, Gotenba, JP;
Yoji Serizawa, Gotenba, JP;
Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
This invention provides a printing apparatus which controls to inhibit any inadvertent write to a memory in an expendable so as to securely manage the exchange timing and the like of the expendable. For this purpose, the expendable such as a toner cartridge or the like comprises a rewritable nonvolatile memory () which holds information indicating whether or not its service life has expired. When the toner cartridge is attached to the printing apparatus, it is ready to communicate with a printer engine controller in the printing apparatus, and write to the nonvolatile memory () can be made in accordance with an instruction from a control unit. A lock functional unit () writes information indicating write inhibition at a predetermined address in the nonvolatile memory (), thus inhibiting write to the address position that stores the information indicating whether or not its service life has expired.