Patent ID: 7853177

Claim:
An electrophotographic image forming apparatus, comprising: first and second photosensitive bodies; first and second charging units to charge the first and second photosensitive bodies; first and second exposing units to form first and second electrostatic latent images on the first and second photosensitive bodies; a first developing unit to develop the first electrostatic latent image of the first photosensitive body to form a transparent toner image by supplying a transparent toner to the first electrostatic latent image of the first photosensitive body; and a second developing unit to develop the second electrostatic latent image of the second photosensitive body to form a color toner image by supplying a color toner to the second electrostatic latent image of the second photosensitive body; and a transfer unit to transfer the transparent toner image and the color toner image onto a recording medium, wherein the first developing unit is a mono-component cleanerless developing unit while the second developing unit comprises at least one cleaning unit, such that the transparent toner that remains on the first photosensitive body after a transfer operation is recovered into the first developing unit by a difference between a surface electric potential of a non-image portion of the first photosensitive body formed by next charging operation and exposure operation after the transfer operation and an electric potential of a developing bias voltage applied to a developing roller of the first developing unit.