Sony has revealed it is investigating the recent self-immolation of a Lenovo ThinkPad T43 at Los Angeles Airport. The fire was apparently caused by the notebook's battery, which may have been a Sony-made component.

As yet, the manufacturer of the battery in the LAX fire - which took place during the weekend of 9-10 September - is not known. Certainly, Lenovo ships some ThinkPads with Sony-made power pack, but has yet to say whether the T43 is one of them or whether the machine had been fitted with a third-party battery.

A Lenovo spokesman last week said the company had "not seen an unusual number of incidents involving its notebooks and Sony's batteries", according to a Cnet report.

Lenovo issued no recall of Sony-made batteries after both Dell and Apple told a total of 5.9m customers to return their laptop power cells for a free replacement. ®