Patent 7847960 was granted and assigned to Konica Minolta on December, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In order to enable setting of a reading condition from an external apparatus, an image reading apparatus includes a reading unit reading a document and outputting an image data in accordance with a given reading condition, a communication unit communicating with an external apparatus through a communication line, a user interface unit receiving an instruction input from a user, and a control unit controlling the reading unit, the communication unit and the user interface unit, and the control unit includes an associating portion associating, when a reading condition is received from the external apparatus through the communication unit, the received reading condition with a one-touch key provided at the user interface unit.