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:
Dec. 23, 2014
Filed:
Apr. 15, 2009
Toru Nakayama, Osaka, JP;
Yoshiteru Nishikawa, Osaka, JP;
Kozo Tao, Osaka, JP;
Hiromi Yamagami, Osaka, JP;
Norifumi Miyahara, Osaka, JP;
Ryuichi Ishizu, Osaka, JP;
Shinichi Hashimoto, Osaka, JP;
Naoki Takeuchi, Osaka, JP;
Toru Nakayama, Osaka, JP;
Yoshiteru Nishikawa, Osaka, JP;
Kozo Tao, Osaka, JP;
Hiromi Yamagami, Osaka, JP;
Norifumi Miyahara, Osaka, JP;
Ryuichi Ishizu, Osaka, JP;
Shinichi Hashimoto, Osaka, JP;
Naoki Takeuchi, Osaka, JP;
Abstract
An image forming apparatus has: pluralities of sheet storage units; a printing unit; a sheet driving unit that feeds a sheet of paper from the sheet storage units to the printing unit; a group setting maintaining unit that forms a group of the sheet storage units; a residual sheet amount detecting unit that detects sheet empty on any of the sheet storage units in the group; a sheet storage switching control unit that controls the sheet driving unit to select another one of the sheet storage units in the same group for feeding a sheet, if the residual sheet amount detecting unit detects the sheet empty; and a sheet empty warning unit that warns a user of the sheet empty detected by the residual sheet amount detecting unit.