There are several reasons why it is still considered a "mystery steel", all of wich comes down to proprietary owner ship and market saturation.
Anything that is of a completely proprietary nature will be seen as novel and unusual, unless there is enough of a market saturation to have it become a house hold name. a good example of this is the memory stick from Sony. It's a completely proprietary media thats used only by Sony - but even then, other companies are allowed to make memory sticks, and there are several card readers capable of reading them from a wide variety of companies. If Sony kept their reigns on the memory stick tighter, allowing only the Sony master company to produce them, and any periferal readers - it would not be what it is today. it would still be a "weird proprietary media".
While the composition of INFI is available on bladeforums - next to nothing is known about its heat treating protocols, or how it reacts to "different" heat treating cycles. It is ONLY used by busse combat, and ONLY made for busse combat.
If Busse Combat had the market saturation of benchmade or kershaw, I beleive that INFI would be less of a "mystery" then it is, but as a company, Busse has a looong way to go in producing the qauntities that large production outfits like kershaw are capable of churning out.
If I say "kershaw" or "buck" to someone on the street, they are fairly likely to know at least one of them as a knife company. No one is going to know Busse, unless they read this forum, or are active knife enthusiasts - or are the rare case of someone who happened to have someone buy it for them or they bought it becaue it looked/sounded good. It's definitely gaining ground, and has been since it first started, but it's not yet a house hold name.
I don't want to portrait Busse combat in a negative light - but the idea of INFI still being a "mystery" steel in the market even after 9 years is not difficult to imagine. No one but busse combat has handled it, no one knows how its heat treated, and you need to know Busse combat first before knowing what INFI is (since its not included in most steel comparison charts).
