Patent ID: 11934715
Assignee: BROTHER KOGYO KABUSHIKI KAISHA
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 2:
3. A method of changing settings related to contract procedures in an image forming apparatus to be subjected to a newly concluded agreement and another image forming apparatus under a concluded agreement and to be replaced with the image forming apparatus, each of the image forming apparatus and the another image forming apparatus including a communication interface, the image forming apparatus including a main casing to which a consumable is attached, the consumable including a consumable memory storing therein type information, the type information indicating whether the consumable is a special consumable that can be used in the image forming apparatus when the image forming apparatus is under the newly concluded agreement or a normal consumable that can be used in the image forming apparatus irrespective of whether or not the image forming apparatus is under the newly concluded agreement,
the method comprising:
when the image forming apparatus is connected to a network via the communication interface, transmitting a connection complete notification from the image forming apparatus via the communication interface to an external device configured to communicate with the image forming apparatus to cause the image forming apparatus to be registered to be subjected to the newly concluded agreement, the connection complete notification indicating that the image forming apparatus is connected to the network;
after the transmitting is performed, causing the image forming apparatus to determine whether the consumable attached to the main casing is the special consumable on the basis of the type information stored in the consumable memory; and
when determining that the consumable attached to the main casing is the special consumable and when printing is performed by the image forming apparatus on the basis of a print instruction, transmitting print information from the image forming apparatus to the external device via the communication interface to cause the concluded agreement for the another image forming apparatus to be cancelled, the print information indicating that the printing is performed by the image forming apparatus on the basis of the print instruction.