Patent ID: 7855797

Claim:
An image forming system providing a plurality of image forming apparatuses and a processing controller for selecting at least one of the apparatuses and causing the selected apparatus to perform image formation, the plurality of image forming apparatuses and the processing controller being connected to one another through a network, wherein each of the image forming apparatuses comprises an other-apparatus information storage section for storing information about one or more other image forming apparatuses as other-apparatus information, said other-apparatus information including fixed information and state information relative to the respective one or more other image forming apparatuses, wherein the state information is varied depending upon the utilization condition of the corresponding other image-forming apparatus and the fixed information is not varied depending upon the utilization condition of the corresponding other image-forming apparatus, and the selected image-forming apparatus comprises an other-apparatus information inputting section for inputting the fixed information, and the processing controller comprises: an information acquiring section for acquiring the other-apparatus information stored in the other-apparatus information storage section of the selected apparatus through the network; a distributed-processing determination section for determining at least one of the one or more other apparatuses to be used for image formation in cooperation with the selected apparatus or determining that only the selected apparatus should be used for image formation, on the basis of the acquired other-apparatus information; and a commanding section for commanding the corresponding image forming apparatus(es) to perform the image formation, on the basis of the determination made by the distributed-processing determination section.