If a battery works with the laptop, it's guaranteed to be a tested compatible one. Quickly slapping up a counterfeit and selling it as a brand-name thing won't work.
A battery ua a critical device, prone to fires or blasts if made improperly. One such incident would significantly tarnish the brand. Thus the over-reaction.
I wish there wad an open spec for certified batteries, to allow for third-party fixes and replacements, though.
If you put a crap SD card in a laptop it might be the wrong size. If you put a bad counterfit battery in and it explodes and permanently disfigures someone you've got a PR nightmare before people have figured out the real reason.
If i were lenovo, i'd be doing the same exact thing, and i'm honestly surprised we don't see more of this stuff in things like cables, chargers, etc...
Writing this on a ThinkPad running Linux. If this comes true I will stop buying Lenovo products. Until today I continue buying ThinkPads because their Linux support is among the best - and for the trackpoint and a good keyboard. But I definitely do not like how they behave lately.
I am watching very closely for alternatives, every time I or any of people I know need to buy a new computer.
As soon as the brand security will become more important as the requirements of their customers I will jump off the brand. A brand without customers is not worth anything.
Does the cost of replacing a few bricked machines outweigh the reputation cost? Probably not, but it's easy to understand the liability issues that arise from non certified OS's.
Ahem, as if there were no reported cases of genuine Apple/Dell/HP/Sony/... batteries catching fire. Seems all those significantly tarnished brands are doing quite fine.
edit: Or... how about Lenovo?
http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2015/Lenovo-Expands-Recall-of...
Wouldn't it be enough to just display an UEFI boot message to notify users when non-original battery is detected?
A user could put a Lo Pan Six Demon Bag battery in their laptop and then it bursts into flames. The user is going to complain that their Lenovo laptop burst into flames. Everyone else is going to parrot that statement because almost no one looks into anything anymore. Once someone does dig into it and find out that it was actually the shoddy Lo Pan battery, its too late. "Lenovo" and "third degree burns" has been plastered all over the Internet and good luck finding Lo Pan to hold him accountable.