nQueue announced on Wednesday that it recently received a patent regarding methods and apparatuses for embedding cost recovery solutions. U.S. Patent No. 7,076,184, entitled “Expense recovery system for copier,” issued on July 11th and claims several methods, application program interfaces, and computer readable media related to accounting, expense recovery, and management regarding photocopiers. The first claim is for a “method of accounting for a job at a copier” with the steps of “receiving identifiers in the copier via an input means of the copier; comparing the identifiers to a store of the identifiers; enabling the copier with a copy enable signal,” and once the copying job is complete, the transmission of “transaction data relating to the job to an expense recovery server via a communications network.” The patent discusses that law firms typically charge clients by the photocopy, and that its copiers may utilize individual control modules because “[it] is desirable to be able to track copy jobs at a job-level for internal expense tracking, as well as from a client perspective for external expense tracking.” The patent then discloses several objects of the invention from “provid[ing] a system of copy accountability that can be managed from a central location or server” to “utiliz[ing] the built-in network connection of a copier to transmit to and receive data from this central server” and “eliminat[ing] the need for a separate copy control module at each copier.” According to Ray Zwiefelhofer, President and CEO of nQueue, “we are thrilled to have this patent issued for a technology that so many of our clients have been enjoying. This is a new era for multifunction device manufacturers, and nQueue is pleased to be included as a key value-add for their machines.”

U.S. Patent No. 7,076,184: LINK
ag-IP-news Article: LINK
nQueue Press Release: LINK