Patent ID: 7832719

Claim:
A method, for buffering documents between a document feeding device and a document processing device, comprising: receiving the documents in a sequential order; transporting the documents in said sequential order via a transport path, comprising, in response to a malfunction of the document processing device or a stroke time for a printer which is at least temporarily shorter than a stroke time of the processing device, collecting in a collecting portion of the transport path at least a number of the documents as a group in which the documents are in mutually overlapping positions with a mutual pitch in transport direction, while a previously collected group of the documents in which the documents are in mutually overlapping positions with a mutual pitch in transport direction is present in a delivery portion of the transport path downstream of the collecting portion, wherein the collected and mutually overlapping documents in the collecting portion are displaced along the collecting portion of the transport path relative to the previously collected group of documents in the delivery portion of the transport path; and delivering the documents of said previously collected group separately from each other in said sequential order from the delivery portion of the transport path and displacing the remaining documents of the previously collected group of documents in the delivery portion of the transport path relative to the collected and mutually overlapping documents in the collecting portion; wherein in response to the delivery of a last document present in the delivery portion from the delivery portion, the entire group of documents collected in the collecting portion is passed on to the delivery portion before the piece-by-piece delivery of documents of said group from the delivery portion is started and wherein the document feeding device feeds additional documents after the passing-on of said group of documents from the collecting portion to the delivery portion and prior to the piece-by-piece delivery of a last document of said group from the delivery portion, and wherein during the piece-by-piece delivery of documents of said group from the delivery portion, the additional documents fed by the feeding device are collected in the collecting portion.