Patent ID: 7990586

Claim:
An image forming apparatus that forms images onto a cover sheet to be used for a case binding and at least a main content sheet, comprising: an image data acquiring component that is configured to acquire consecutive image data, which include main content image data and at least a part of cover sheet image data succeeding the main content image data; an image forming component that is configured to conduct an image forming operation based on the main content image data and the cover sheet image data, acquired by the image data acquiring component, so as to form the images onto the cover sheet and at least the main content sheet; an operating component that is configured to establish a page number of image data sets to be included in the cover sheet image data, wherein the page number of image data sets is represented by integer “i”; an image data presence-or-absence detecting component that is configured to detect a presence or absence of (i+1)th image data acquired by the image data acquiring component, wherein -th is replaced by corresponding one of -st, -nd, -rd, when a calculated value in the parentheses is equal to any one of 1, 2, 3; and a control component that is configured to control the image forming component so as to commence the image forming operation at a time during a period after the image data presence-or-absence detecting component has detected the presence of (i+1)th image data, acquired by the image data acquiring component, and before the image data acquiring component completes an operation for acquiring the consecutive image data.