Energy metering aficionados (and they exist, believe me) had an interesting diversion last week, when the High Court handed down a declaratory judgment, in proceedings brought by regulator Transport for London and the “bête noire” of the black cabs, Uber.

At issue was the question of whether or not the Uber technology for charging for a journey was akin to a taximeter. If it was, then that would bring Uber private hire cars operating in London up against the full weight of the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998, which makes it a criminal offence for private hire cars to use taximeters.

Not (yet) a convert myself, I was in New York over the summer, and my host for dinner quickly organized me a cab ride back to my hotel using the Uber app on his smart phone. To my best recollection (these days I’m the wrong side of 50, and so last summer is now a distant memory - in any event we’d had a lot of nice wine), the car was outside in minutes. And as the many Uber users can testify, we were able to check out the driver from the car description and his name and photo, all of which were displayed on the phone.

In my experience, Americans are always very generous hosts, and so I’ve no idea how the charging stuff worked. From what I can gather, GPS technology is used to work out the logistics of the journey you want to take, and the Uber technology calculates the fare based on that.

The Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, the body representing London black cab drivers, argues that this is doing exactly what a taximeter does. That makes it a taximeter; if it looks like an elephant, it is an elephant.

Not so, according to Mr Justice Ouseley, who was persuaded that the respective regulations governing private hire vehicles and black cabs require a taximeter to be something intrinsic to the vehicle itself. Key for him was that the journey logistics and fare calculation in an Uber hire car were all performed by an external server working in conjunction with the app on the Uber driver’s phone which was connected not to the vehicle but instead to the driver.

Cue lots of thoroughly fed up black car drivers in London, who have been at the sharp end of this so-called disruptive technology, which is resulting in an uneven playing field of regulation since London cabs are required to use taximeters and submit to tests and inspections and fare regulation.

And it’s hard not to feel some sympathy. The High Court’s decision seems to give prominence to input over output, or form over function; although to be fair, the courts can only interpret the law as it stands. Surely parallel systems of regulation - of private hire cars and taxicabs – should apply by reference to what the service looks and feels like from the customer perspective, rather than the underlying technology?

This is not, of course, the end of things, as Uber has plenty of other battles to fight. Chief amongst these is Boris Johnson’s plans for mandatory 5 minute waiting and banning of ride sharing, and the tricky job he has on his plate of balancing the interests of consumers and competition with the need to address increasing traffic congestion and vehicle emissions.

New technology is similarly set to drive change in the energy markets, with a new generation of smart meters expected to drive behavior change of consumers to deliver reductions in energy consumption and carbon emissions. But that’s another story.

* Andrew Whitehead is Senior Partner at law firm Shakespeare Martineau and leads the firm’s Energy & Climate Change practice.