Patent ID: 7552265

Claim:
A system comprising: a plurality of devices, wherein devices within the plurality of devices communicate with incompatible protocols comprising: file system domain protocols and printer domain protocols; a first device in the plurality of devices having a universal contextual interface, wherein the universal contextual interface does not have a priori knowledge of the devices' file system domain protocol or the devices' printer domain protocol, wherein the devices' file system domain protocol comprises Network File System (NSF) or Common Internet File System (CIFS), wherein the devices' printer domain protocol comprises Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) or Line Printer Daemon, wherein the universal contextual interface is implemented in Java; wherein the universal contextual interface comprises instructions that are particular to the first device, wherein the instructions can: be understood and performed by the plurality of devices to enable the plurality of devices to communicate and transfer contextual data with the first device; provide event notifications to the plurality of devices with respect to changes in contextual data for the first device; and enable the plurality of devices to receive user interfaces to allow users of the plurality of devices to view changed contextual data or enable the plurality of devices to receive data from the first device; and wherein contextual data includes information with respect to the first device including type, owner, history of use, whether the first device is currently in use, other operating status information, identity, location on network, administrative domain, information with respect to one or more users of the first device or files stored at the first device; and a second device in the plurality of devices that invokes the universal contextual interface of the first device by executing the instructions to transfer the contextual data associated with the first device between the first device and at least one of the other devices in the plurality of devices, the plurality of devices having no prior knowledge of each other; wherein the universal contextual interface is directly invoked by the second device to allow the contextual data to be transferred to the second device; wherein the second device registers as a listener with the first device through a notification interface of the first device to receive event notifications with respect to changes in the contextual data associated with the first device; and wherein the universal contextual interface allows components using different operating systems, communication protocols, file formats, and data types to transfer context information between each other without requiring the components to use domain-specific interfaces, protocols, or data format.