Patent ID: 8595140

Claim:
A firmware distributing device, comprising: a communication unit connected with two or more terminal devices through a network; a registered firmware control table which registers modified firmware; a downloading device table, which comprises device IDs and customer names, registering and controlling names of customers owning terminal devices which are currently executing a download until the download is terminated; and a firmware distributing unit, comprising a processor and a memory, which is provided with a registration control unit, a download executing unit and a download stopping unit, distributing a firmware; wherein, the registration control unit registering the modified firmware to the registered firmware control table and controlling the firmware; the download executing unit, when a download request is received from either of a terminal device of two or more terminal devices that share a communication line, determining unupdated firmware in a terminal device which requests the download; and the download stopping unit, when a download request is received from another terminal device during execution of a download of firmware to the terminal device, acquiring user identification information obtained from the download request and, if the user identification information matches user identification information of the terminal device which is already carrying out a download, the download request is determined to be the download request from the terminal device that belongs to the same customer site sharing a communication line, stopping download of the terminal device that outputs the download request by responding that there is no unupdated firmware even when there is unupdated firmware, where overlapping of download of the plurality of terminal devices sharing the communication line is avoided.