04/08/2015 | 04:35pm US/Eastern
By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Computer Weekly News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by VerticalNews journalists, a patent by the inventors McFarland, Max E. (Sunnyvale, CA); Mariotti, Andrea (San Carlos, CA); Phillips, Daja (Palo Alto, CA); Dybbs, Susan (San Francisco, CA), filed on November 5, 2009, was published online on March 31, 2015.
The assignee for this patent, patent number 8995002, is Ricoh Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, JP).
Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: "The present invention generally relates to the field of printing. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for printing independent of location and using a universal print module. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a print key for use in printing.
"In general, computing devices have become common place and are used in almost every environment such as office, home, public settings, library, hotels, restaurants, etc. The computing devices are often portable such as but not limited to laptop computers, notebook computers, netbook computers, smart phones and the like. Even for corporate portable computing devices, the portable computing devices are often used in multiple different office locations. When the portable computing devices are used at the base office for the user, the portable computing devices typically have a printer set up and installed so the user is able to print. However, when the portable computing device is use in one of the other offices, it typically does not have a printer set up for that location. This creates a problem because it is often difficult to print using one's portable computing device except when in one's base office.
"While it is not impossible to be able to print at these other locations, it typically requires a significant amount of time and effort to configure one's computer to be able to print at such other office locations. For example, users often will ask colleagues to printed documents for them typically by transferring their file to their colleague using a USB flash drive rather than trying to configure their computing device to print. One particular problem is that in order to print on a specific printer, the print driver for that printer must be loaded and enabled on a computing device. Offices often include several printers of different makes and models, and thus, requiring different print drivers. Another problem in printing is connection of the portable computing device to the printer for interaction with each other because many networks have security that prevents such interaction."
In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, VerticalNews editors also obtained the inventors' summary information for this patent: "The present invention includes systems and methods for printing independent of location and using a universal print module. In one embodiment, the present invention comprises a computing device having a print anywhere sending module and a printer having a print anywhere receiving module coupled by a network. The print anywhere sending module is adapted to interface with the computing device to generate a print file. The print anywhere sending module broadcasts the availability of a print file or job and transmits that print job to a responding print anywhere receiving module. The print anywhere receiving module interfaces with the printer to generate an output of the print file by the printer.