Care to elaborate on that a bit more. I'm fairly certain that a softer cover would always cause a loss of distance compared to a harder ball. In physics we did live ball/dead ball experiments and the live ball always had more momentum after a collision, I'm pretty sure the same laws of physics apply in this situation.
I really don't see how a ball can have a layer to reduce driver sidespin, its not like they're putting gyroscopes in golf balls so they can differentiate between sidespin and backspin. A layer that reduces driver spin in general I can beleive though.
If your a slicer and make two equivalent swings, a ball that spins less is going to have less sidespin and will slice less, and a ball that spins more is going to have more sidespin and slice more.