62 (1853),[1] also known as The Telegraph Patent Case, is an 1854 decision of the United States Supreme Court that has been highly influential in the development of the law of patent-eligibility in regard to claimed inventions in the field of computer-software related art.

To send a signal from Baltimore to Washington would require thousands of volts and high currents – not feasible at a time when managing to make a pickled frog’s legs twitch, as Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta did, was the major achievement of the electro-galvanic force.

Samuel Morse’s “plan [was] combining two or more electric or galvanic circuits, with independent batteries for the purpose of overcoming the diminished force of electromagnetism in long circuits.” The concept is illustrated in the figure shown at the right.

Morse inserted the relays (or “repeaters” as the opinion terms them) at sufficiently short intervals (say, every 15 to 20 miles) so that the signal was regularly restored to its initial level before noise could swamp it out.

I do not propose to limit myself to the specific machinery or parts of machinery described in the foregoing specification and claims; the essence of my invention being the use of the motive power of the electric or galvanic current, which I call electro-magnetism, however developed for marking or printing intelligible characters, signs, or letters, at any distances, being a new application of that power of which I claim to be the first inventor or discoverer.

As Justice Taney, speaking for the majority of the Court, explained it, "He claims the exclusive right to every improvement where the motive power is the electric or galvanic current, and the result is the marking or printing intelligible characters, signs, or letters at a distance."