Copying apparatus for copying a recoding medium, a method thereof and a computer program thereof

#1. Field of the Invention

#The present invention relates to a copying apparatus for copying a recording medium, a method and a computer program thereof, and more particularly to a copying apparatus for copying a recording medium, a method and a computer program thereof where address information of a recording area is manipulated.

#The present invention relates to a copying apparatus for successfully copying an optical recording medium, which is or will be in existence, such as an audio compact disc, a combination of compact discs, a compact disc including other optical recording medium, a compact disc included in other optical recording medium and a CD-R (CD-Recordable) or CD-RW (CD-Rewritable).

#FIG. 1 shows an example of the structure of information recorded on a general DVD.

#FIG. 2a shows a series of pieces of the information, hypothetically arranged in a row, recorded on from an innermost track to an outermost track of a general optical recording medium and address values allocated to the series of pieces of the information.

#FIG. 2b shows a series of pieces of the information, hypothetically arranged in a row, recorded on from the innermost track to the outermost track of the copy-protected optical recording medium according to the prior art and address values allocated to the series of pieces of the information.

#Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to attached drawings.

#FIG. 3 is a functional block diagram schematically showing an exemplary embodiment of a recording medium copying apparatus 100 according to the present invention. As shown in FIG. 3, the copying apparatus 100 according to is the present invention includes a file reading unit 110 for forwardly and/or reversely reading and managing data of a file recorded on a original recording medium desired to be copied, a file comparing and identifying unit 112 for comparing files read from the original recording medium and identifying files whether they are identical to each other or not, an address processing unit 114 for collecting addresses of the files with regard to the original recording medium and generating and assigning addresses for recording the files on a duplicate recording medium and a file recording unit for recording the files at the addresses assigned by the address processing unit 114 on the duplicate recording medium.

#When an original recording medium of a structure as shown in FIG. 2b is put inside the copying apparatus 100, the file reading unit 110 reads data on the original recording medium in a direction (hereinafter referred to as a “forward direction”) which is from a position (hereinafter referred to as a “head of recording medium”) whose address has the smallest value to a position (hereinafter referred to as an “end of recording medium”) whose address has the largest value and retrieves files recorded on the recording medium. These files retrieved in the forward direction as above will be referred to herein as “forward direction files”.