Business briefs: Halfords | Youtube

HALFORDS yesterday vowed to capitalise on a “particularly buoyant” cycle market but warned the continued rise in fuel prices was a worry.

The car parts and leisure goods retailer is confident that interest in Britain’s Olympics 2012 cycling team will lead to strong bicycle sales this year, although it admits that as market leader it faces strong competition.

It said overall trading conditions were likely to remain challenging, particularly for motorists, and warned that it expects a 4 per cent hike in operating costs this year, mainly due to business rates and staff costs.

Halfords said like-for-like sales in the final quarter of its financial year to the end of March fell 2.3 per cent, although this was an improvement on the previous three-month period. Shares dipped 7p to 308.4p.

YouTube video lawsuit revived

AN APPEALS court in the United States has revived lawsuits by Viacom and various film studios and television networks accusing Google of allowing copyrighted videos on its YouTube service without permission.

The court said last night that a reasonable jury could have found that YouTube knew of specific infringing activity on its site, overturning as mistaken a dismissal of the case by a lower court.

The original $1 billion (£630 million) lawsuit filed by Viacom in 2007 went to the heart of a major issue facing media companies, specifically how to win internet viewers without ceding control of TV shows, movies and music.

Viacom had claimed that “tens of thousands of videos” based on its copyrighted works had been posted on the YouTube website.