US Patent 7971242 Printing system

This invention provides a printing system which reduces cost while stably operating an authentication server function associated with a print process. To accomplish this, this invention relates to a printing system including a plurality of authentication servers, a client communicable with the authentication servers, and a printing apparatus. The client gains access with user authentication information, and outputs a print job containing response access restriction information. The authentication server issues access restriction information to the client. The printing apparatus holds decryption information to decrypt the encrypted access restriction information, and determines whether decryption information corresponding to an identifier is held. When determining that no corresponding decryption information is held, the printing apparatus obtains the decryption information, and performs verification based on the obtained or held decryption information.