Patent ID: 7308572

Claim:
A method of printing a document stored at a home computing system on a printer associated with a remote computing system which are configured to be able to establish communication between the home system and the printer via a secure communications channel, in which: the printer includes a digital identification device configured to provide a printer public key of a cryptographic public key/private key pair; and the method including the steps of: using a mobile device to interrogate the printer to obtain the printer public key, and secure communications channel information to enable the secure communications channel to be established; using the mobile device to transmit to the home computing system a print request including the printer public key and the secure channel information and identification of the document to be printed; establishing the secure communications channel between the home computing system and the printer using the secure channel information; the home computing system transmitting the document encrypted with the use of an encryption key to the printer via the secure communications channel; and the printer decrypting the encrypted document and initiating printing of the document.