Patent ID: 8115943

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an information providing part configured to send, to a client terminal, screen data for inputting a print request; a storage part configured to store information of functions of a plurality of image forming apparatuses, including the image forming apparatus and other image forming apparatuses connected to the image forming apparatus via a network, and information of destination addresses of the image forming apparatuses; a printing part configured to perform print processing when receiving the print request and print data from the client terminal; a determination part configured to determine whether a designation of a function is included in the print request, and when the designation of a function is included in the print request, to determine whether any of the plurality of image forming apparatuses, including the image forming apparatus, has the function included in the print request based on the information of functions stored in the storage part, and to extract any of the plurality of image forming apparatuses that have the function included in the print request; and a print request part configured to request the printing part of the image forming apparatus to print the print data when the designation of a function is included in the print request and when the image forming apparatus is included as an extracted image forming apparatus that has the function included in the print request based on the determination by the determination part, to request one or more of the other image forming apparatuses to print the print data when the designation of a function is included in the print request and when the one or more of the other image forming apparatuses are included as extracted image forming apparatus that have the function included in the print request based on the determination by the determination part, and to request the printing part of at least the image forming apparatus to print the print data when the designation of a function is not included in the print request.