Lenovo, the maker of IBM ThinkPad-branded laptops, said it would investigate an incident with its laptop, when the notebook started to smoke and spark. The company also admitted that the device used battery cells made by Sony, which are already known for causing such issues.

“A Lenovo ThinkPad T43 notebook computer overheated and began smoking and sparking on September 16 at Los Angeles International Airport, but no one was injured,” a Lenovo spokesman in Tokyo is reported to have said, according to Reuters news-agency.

It was not yet clear what caused the malfunction, however, the highly-likely scenario is that problematic battery cells from Sony were the source of the issue again. Even though Lenovo spokesman admitted that the ThinkPad T43 used a battery that contained cells made by Sony, a representative for the latter said that his company could not determine whether this was true.

Back in August Apple and Dell have recalled combined 5.9 million batteries for notebooks after 9 and 6 incidents, respectively, in which batteries produced by Sony flamed and/or exploded. A spokesman for Sony indicated that Sony Electronics is “speaking regularly with its battery customers” and expressed opinion that the recalls would stop with Apple and Dell, implying that HP and Lenovo, another notebook suppliers who used batteries by Sony, will not recall their products. Later on Panasonic said it would recall batteries for 6 thousand of its laptop batteries that contained Sony-made cells due to fire hazard and Toshiba claimed another issue to recall its laptops. Sony itself said it would not replace batteries for its own Vaio notebooks.

Sony said in an official statement that the recall arises because, on rare occasions, microscopic metal particles in the recalled battery cells may come into contact with other parts of the battery cell, leading to a short circuit within the cell. Typically, a battery pack will simply power off when a cell short circuit occurs. However, under certain rare conditions, an internal short circuit may lead to cell overheating and potentially flames, the company indicated. The potential for this to occur can be affected by variations in the system configurations found in different notebook computers.