Bleem launched its PlayStation emulator just over two and a half years ago, only to be instantly sued by Sony for a mix of copyright infringement, intellectual property violation and brand degradation.
Sony's case against Bleem followed a parallel action targeting Connectix, which launched a PlayStation emulator of its own earlier in the year, for the Macintosh. Unlike the Connectix case, however, Bleem won the support of the court, beating a temporary injunction against sales of its emulator and later defeating Sony's demand to ban the sale of the emulator permanently.
Sony's failures in court went to its head, Bleem later alleged in a countersuit of its own. The emulation company claimed that the Japanese giant's US operation had initiated a dirty tricks policy which, in part, involved attempting to have Bleem thrown out of the May 1999 E3 show, one of the world's largest games industry shindigs.
May 2000 saw the announcement of the Dreamcast version of Bleem - Bleemcast - at which point Sony sued the company again. Once more, Sony alleged that Bleem was violating its patents.