Patent ID: 7938390

Claim:
A document feeding device for feeding documents, comprising: a document input tray on which documents to be fed are placed; a document output tray which is placed above the document input tray and to which the documents are ejected; and a feeding mechanism which feeds each document along a feeding path connecting the document input tray and the document output tray via a scanning position from the document input tray to the scanning position and from the scanning position to the document output tray, wherein: the document output tray includes a reference tray and a pivoting tray which is placed on a downstream side of the reference tray in a feeding direction to be pivotable with respect to the reference tray around a pivot shaft situated on an upstream side of the pivoting tray in the feeding direction, and the document feeding device further comprises a pivot restricting part which restricts the pivoting of the pivoting tray at a retracted position when the pivoting tray has pivoted from a document stacking position, where the documents can be stacked on a stacking surface of the pivoting tray, to the retracted position, and the pivot shaft is situated above an upstream end of the stacking surface of the pivoting tray in the feeding direction when the pivoting tray is placed at the document stacking position, wherein a space is formed between the stacking surface of the pivoting tray and a stacking surface of the reference tray, when the document output tray is positioned in the retracted position, wherein the space is configured to allow a document ejected by the feeding mechanism to pass through the space to the document input tray.