Patent ID: 8390840

Claim:
An authentication-based printing system providing an authentication-based printing function for both a first printing device and a second printing device, comprising: an authentication-based print-job generation unit; and an authentication unit, wherein the authentication-based print-job generation unit comprises: a first central processing unit configured to access: a job acquisition module that is configured to be able to acquire, from a first printer driver, a print-job in a first format that can be processed by the first printing device and, from a second printer driver, a print-job in a second format that can be processed by the second printing device, the second format being a format that cannot be processed by the first printing device or a format with no information for specifying a printing person added; a module that acquires, with respect to the print-job acquired by the job acquisition module, identification information for either a user who has ordered that print-job or another user specified as a printing person, as printing person identification information; and a module that generates an authentication-based print-job by adding the acquired printing person identification information and information specifying a destination printer device to the print-job acquired by the job acquisition module, and outputs the generated authentication-based print-job to the authentication unit, and wherein the authentication unit comprises: a second central processing unit configured to access: a module that acquires the authentication-based print-job output from the authentication-based print-job generation unit; a module that extracts, from the acquired authentication-based print-job, the printing person identification information, the information specifying the destination printer device, and the print-job, and stores them in a storage module in association with each other; a module that executes authentication for a user who requests execution of printing; a module that refers to the storage module, and selects a print-job associated with the printing person identification information for the authenticated user; and a module that outputs the selected print-job to the first or second printing device specified by the information specifying the destination printer device.