Patent ID: 8515981

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: at least a processor and memory, which cooperate to function as: a contract document dependency relationship determination unit configured to determine, when a plurality of programs and a plurality of contract documents that correspond to each of the plurality of programs are acquired from an external apparatus, whether or not there is a contract document included in another contract document among the plurality of contract documents from contract document dependency relationship information included in each of the plurality of contract documents; a contract document priority determination unit configured to determine a priority order among the plurality of contract documents from contract document priority information included in each of the plurality of contract documents; a first deletion processing unit configured to delete a contract document that has been determined to be included in another contract document by said contract document dependency relationship determination unit and a contract document that has been determined to be of the least priority by said contract document priority determination unit; an integration unit configured to integrate remaining contract documents into an integrated contract document after the processing performed by said first deletion processing unit is complete; a second deletion processing unit configured to extract and delete an overlapping portion from the integrated contract document that has been integrated by said integration unit; a contract document authorization unit configured to authorize the integrated contract document that has been subjected to the processing performed by said second deletion processing unit; and a program installation unit configured to install the plurality of programs that correspond to the integrated contract document that has been authorized by said contract document authorization unit.