Patent ID: 8390842

Claim:
A port monitor program embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium in an information processing apparatus having a printer driver configured to generate data about a print job and a spooler configured to spool the data about the print job, wherein the port monitor program includes computer-executable instructions for having a function of data transmission and data receipt and transmitting the data about the print job spooled by the spooler to an image forming apparatus, the port monitor program comprising: computer-executable instructions for reading the data about the print job that is generated by the printer driver and spooled by the spooler; computer-executable instructions for analyzing whether the read data about the print job includes information indicating that the printer driver supports restriction of printing and for determining whether an authentication process associated with restriction of printing is already performed for the data about the print job by the printer driver which supports the authentication process associated with the restriction of printing based on the analysis; computer-executable instructions for submitting a request to an external server over a network to acquire, from the external server, functional restriction information used for the restriction of printing in response to determining that the authentication process has not already been performed; computer-executable instructions for determining, based on the functional restriction information acquired from the external server, how the print job is restricted; and computer-executable instructions for transmitting the data about the print job to the image forming apparatus based on a result of determining how the print job is restricted in response to determining that the authentication process has not already been performed and for transmitting the data about the print job to the image forming apparatus without submitting a request in response to determining that the authentication process has already been performed.