> I have a simpler explanation for that. Someone bought the tooling (injection moulds?), in an auction maybe

But the company never sold them, so even they from the beginning reasonably believed they had in fact manufactured the slide. Had they sold the molds (which I don’t think a company would do bearing their mark without selling the actual mark as well) it would have actually helped their defense and helped them consider/discover they were not the manufacturer of this particular slide.

It’s somewhat common for worn out molds to be sold as scrap metal, then someone buys them from the scrap dealer and starts making counterfeits. This is why quite a few places will deface old molds before scrapping so it would be cheaper for the counterfeiter to make a new mold than repair the genuine one.

Ah, those details were not clear from the original story.

They could have assumed (at the start of the process) that it could have been a pre-dissolution built slide.

But if they admit that, during the dissolution process their machinery wasn't sold that definitely goes against my theory.

FWIW I think your comment was in good faith and at minimum intellectually curious.

I asked my colleague similar questions when hearing about the case.

The slide probably cut someone because it didn't fit together quite right or there was a sharp parting line because the tooling used to make it was worn out (hence why the cost was low enough that the segment of the market that doesn't give a F was able to buy it).