IP-2024-000061 - [2025] EWHC 1936 (IPEC)

Having read the prior art, the skilled team as identified would have had in mind what, if anything, could be done to improve the experience of conventional karting by using features of the prior art. At the forefront of the team’s collective mind would have been that if features of the cited prior art were to have any practical application to conventional karting there would be a need to have a system capable of maintaining continuous location of the karts, a need to use lighting to project images of a track and of obstacles and possibly other items, and a need to have software which would coordinate these to make a satisfying karting experience. Skills in tracking and lighting are skills found in the entertainment industry.

Battlekart’s position was that Mr Viant had the background to speak with authority about the systems engineer who would be the key figure pulling the project together, having been advised on details of software implementation by the software engineer and on how to adapt commercial karts so that they would respond as required to electronic instruction from the server as well as from the player/driver. That may be right, but this case raised issues about the CGK of other members of the Catnic skilled team. This included the CGK relating to a tracking system which can detect the location of each kart and CGK relating to a projector system capable of producing images which combined to create, among other things, an image of the track and obstacles on it. These were important issues about which the experts gave evidence. Apparently Mr Viant does not have first-hand knowledge and experience of either of the two I have just mentioned.

Mr Densham’s background is in lighting for TV, theatrical and outdoor productions, but not directly XR. He founded his CAST company and led the development of software to control lighting for the creation of effects in live productions and to coordinate the lighting with a tracking system. The considerations that would have occurred to the skilled team having read the prior art are significantly more within Mr Densham’s area of expertise than Mr Viant’s.

Neither Mr Viant nor Mr Densham embodied the Catnic skilled team of this case but Mr Densham by some margin came closer.