what is a Murphy Bed?

what is a Murphy Bed?

William Lawrence Murphy (1876–1959), applied for a patent for the Murphy bed on April 1, 1916, and was granted Design Patent D49,273 on June 27, 1916. Murphy started the Murphy Wall Bed Company and began production in San Francisco. In January 1990, the company changed its name to the "Murphy Bed Co. Inc.".

In 1989, an appellate court held that the term "Murphy Bed" is no longer entitled to trademark cover because a substantial majority of the public perceive the term as a generic term for a bed that folds into a wall, rather than the specific model made by the Murphy Bed Co (wikipedia.org)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_bed