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It's bad enough when a big-name vendor like Sony has issues with exploding batteries, but it gets even worse when shady vendors sell forged merchandise. Such is the case with a company called Shentech, whom IBM is suing for, among other reasons, false advertising and trademark infringement.

It seems Shentech has been selling batteries with a fake IBM logo, which might inspire a little confidence that the knockoff batteries were good quality. Unfortunately for both companies involved, the batteries had potential defects in them that could cause them to overheat and catch fire – no big surprise to any who have been paying attention to the news the past two years. Now, IBM is taking Shentech to court. It seems IBM discovered the fraud through Lenovo on a routine repair, then managed to purchase forged batteries themselves from the company.

IBM is demanding that all the forged batteries be delivered to them for destruction, along with all the profits from the sale of the batteries as well as large amounts of money on top of that. While I don't particularly care for sue-happy companies trying to push other companies around (like SCO), in this particular instance I hope IBM prevails. Knock-off hardware is something that could trouble anyone, all the way down to the consumer, and is a bad deal all around.