Patent ID: 8477355

Claim:
An image forming system, comprising: an image forming apparatus connected to a network; and a client apparatus connected to the network, wherein the client apparatus comprises: a first communication processing unit configured to transmit a Probe message including a search keyword to the image forming apparatus and to receive a ProbeMatch message from the image forming apparatus; and wherein the image forming apparatus comprises: a storage device configured to store a settings keyword; a second communication processing unit configured to receive the Probe message from the first communication processing unit; a message analysis unit configured to retrieve the search keyword from the Probe message; and a keyword determination unit configured to determine whether or not the keyword in the Probe message matches the keyword stored in the storage device; wherein the second communication processing unit is further configured to, if the search keyword from the Probe message matches the settings keyword stored in the storage device, transmit the ProbeMatch message to the first communication processing unit; wherein the Probe message includes an identifier that distinguishes the Probe message from a web service search performed using WS-Discovery; wherein the keyword determination unit is configured to determine whether or not the search keyword in the Probe message matches the settings keyword stored in the storage device if the Probe message includes the identifier; and wherein the second communication processing unit is configured to transmit the ProbeMatch message to the first communication processing unit when the image forming apparatus provides the web service specified in the Probe message.