Patents Portfolio

U.S. Patent: 10,140,071

Patent Title

Printers, printer controllers, printer software, or printer firmware for supporting wireless printing or printing over air

Meta Information

Issued Date: November 27, 2018
Inventor: William Ho Chang et al
External Links: UPSTO, Google Patents

Technical Fields

Printer

Abstract

Printers or printer controllers supporting wireless printing, or printing over air, are herein disclosed and enabled. The printer or printer controller may include wireless communication circuitry to facilitate a client to discover the printer. Subsequent to being discovered by the client, the printer may wirelessly transmit at least part of an output device profile to the client that has discovered the printer or the printer controller, the output device profile includes information related to the printer. After the printer is selected or identified for service, the printer may receive, from the client, print data that is based, at least partly, on the output device profile. A device specific driver may or may not be necessary for printing. The device discovery may be a short range wireless communication or local area network communication. The wireless communication circuitry may support at least part of IEEE 802.11 standards or Bluetooth specifications.

Sample Claim

1. A printing device supporting wireless printing of digital content, comprising:

a memory or storage hardware component to store at least part of an output device profile, the output device profile includes at least one attribute related to the printing device; and

one or more wireless communication units for wireless communication, the one or more wireless communication units include one or more wireless communication chips or chipsets, at least one wireless communication chip or chipset of the one or more wireless communication chips or chipsets being compatible, at least partly, with at least one protocol within IEEE 802.11 wireless standards; and

wherein the printing device uses the one or more wireless communication chips or chipsets to:

wirelessly broadcast availability of the printing device for the one or more wireless information apparatuses to wirelessly discover the printing device for service;

wirelessly transmit at least part of the output device profile, stored within the printing device, to the one or more wireless information apparatuses that have wirelessly discovered the printing device; and

wirelessly receive, from the one or more wireless information apparatuses and via the at least one wireless communication chip or chipset that is compatible, at least partly, with at least one protocol within IEEE 802.11 wireless standards, print data that is related to at least part of the digital content for printing at the printing device, and wherein the print data is further related, at least partly, to the at least one attribute included in the output device profile that is wirelessly transmitted from the printing device to the one or more wireless information apparatuses.