Patent ID: 8102741

Claim:
A finalization determination method for determining whether or not a write-once read-many information recording medium is already finalized, wherein: at least one disc management working area and at least one disc management area are allocated on the write-once read-many information recording medium in the at least one disc management working area, disc management information, which is management information about the write-once read-many information recording medium, and a disc definition structure containing positional information about the disc management information, are recorded; and the finalization determination method comprising the steps of: (a) reading data from one of the at least one disc management areas and determining whether or not the one of the at least one disc management areas is recorded; and (b) determining, based on a result of the step (a), whether or not the write-once read-many information recording medium is changed from a write-once read-many state to a non-write-once read-many state.