Patent ID: 8867058

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a communication interface configured to communicate with another image forming apparatus and a plurality of terminals; an image forming assembly; a storage configured to store a plurality of pieces of registration information, wherein at least one piece of registration information comprises: terminal information indicating two or more terminals from among the plurality of terminals; and a piece of authentication information corresponding to the terminal information; an input device configured to input the piece of authentication information; a processor; and memory having instructions stored therein that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to operate as: an acquisition section configured to acquire the at least one piece of registration information, including the terminal information corresponding to the piece of authentication information inputted by the input device from at least one of the storage of the image forming apparatus and a second storage of the another image forming apparatus; a controller configured to generate transmission request data for requesting image data, to transmit the generated transmission request data to each of the two or more terminals indicated by the terminal information included in the at least one piece of registration information acquired by the acquisition section, and to control the image forming assembly to form an image on a recording medium based on the image data received in response to the transmission request data; a determination section configured to determine whether a particular piece of registration information is stored in both the storage of the image forming apparatus and the second storage of the another image forming apparatus; and a storage management section configured to delete the particular piece of registration information from the storage of the image forming apparatus when the determination section determines that the particular piece of registration information is stored in both the storage of the image forming apparatus and the second storage of the another image forming apparatus.