Patent ID: 7340514

Claim:
A printing system for performing printing operations for print data, comprising: a network, a print controller connected to the network, a mail server connected to the network, and a plurality of client devices connected to the network, wherein: each of the plurality of client devices includes a print data transmitter that transmits print data sets to the print controller to be printed by a printer; the print controller includes: a print data receiver for receiving the print data sets from the client devices; a print data manager for designating correspondence between received print data sets and print management information that indicates conditions of printing operations for the print data sets received from the plurality of client devices, the print management information including one or more of a print data set ID for each print data set, name of each person who prepared each print data set, a time when each print data was spooled, a time when printing was last performed based on each print data, and an indication whether each print data should be erased, and, if so, a time when each print data set can be erased; and a notification data preparer that prepares, based on the print management information, notification data to be notified to each of the plurality of client devices, and that transmits the notification data to the mail server; the mail server includes an electronic mail preparer that prepares the received notification data into an electronic mail message, and that transmits the electronic mail message to each of the plurality of client devices; and each of the plurality of client devices further includes an electronic mail receiver that receives the notification data in the electronic mail message from the mail server, wherein each of the plurality of client devices obtains, from the notification data, information of print data spooled at the print controller from other client devices.