Québec's Bill 96 and trademarks: Still in force, and being enforced!

The regulations affecting trademarks weren't fully in effect until 2025. More than a year later, the number of complaints against businesses has never been higher. 

Canadian provinces continue to signal that they're willing to work together and build more interprovincial business. Look no further than the Canadian Free Trade Agreement and recent developments under it, including the agreement nine premiers signed in July 2026 to allow direct-to-consumer sales of alcoholic beverages. Provinces are working together from coast to coast, from B.C. to P.E.I. 

Québec is part of that conversation as well. It signed the 2025 memorandum of understanding that led to the alcohol agreement and has said it intends to sign the agreement itself once the necessary provincial laws are amended.

Building business in Québec, though, comes with a consideration that doesn't apply anywhere else in Canada. Québec's Bill 96 (formally, An Act respecting French, the official and common language of Québec) and the Charter of the French language (the Charter) put commercial organizations operating in or entering that market on a mandatory compliance track. That affects how you do business there and, in the context of this article, how you use your trademark.

A quick recap: How does Bill 96 affect business owners and trademarks in Québec?

The good news first: in most cases, your trademark itself doesn't have to be translated. The Charter as amended by Bill 96 preserves the exception for registered marks, and the 2024 amendments to the Regulation respecting the language of commerce and business extended it back to recognized marks, including unregistered common law marks. A significant condition is that no French version of the mark appears on the federal trademark register.

The exception is narrow. Generally, everything else on a product must be in French, including the container, the wrapping, and anything supplied with it. Another language can usually appear alongside, but it can't be given more prominence than the French. Where a generic term or a description of the product sits inside the trademark itself, that text will also have to appear in French, either on the product or on a medium permanently attached to it. There are narrow exemptions for certain imported, cultural and specialty products, and the analysis depends on the goods.

Signage works differently. Where a non-French trademark appears on public signage visible from outside premises, it has to be accompanied by French wording, such as a generic term, a description, or a slogan, and that French wording must be markedly predominant. The threshold for "markedly predominant" includes but is not limited to:

• The French text takes up at least twice the space of the non-French text within the same visual field.
• On digital signage, the French text is displayed for at least twice as long as the non-French text.
• The French elements are as permanent, visible, and legible as any non-French elements.

The amendments also affected commercial publications, including websites and social media, generally requiring equivalent accessibility and content as between French and other languages.

You can see our June 2024 summary of impacts here.

Enforcement

Québec's Office québécois de la langue française (the OQLF) is the regulator responsible for compliance with the Charter, and it monitors complaints about non-compliance, including under Bill 96.

The growth in complaint numbers illustrates the environment businesses are operating in. Complaint volume has been climbing since 2019 and has more than tripled over that period, from just under 3,000 to a record 11,125 in the year ending March 2026. Just over half of the concerned businesses are in the Montréal area. Most of that volume is about language of service and commercial documentation rather than signage, but the direction is clear enough: any member of the public can trigger an inspection, and more of them are doing it.

The OQLF is also running a large undercover shopper study through November 2026, sending observers into roughly 7,800 businesses to record the language in which customers are greeted and served. The OQLF describes it as research as opposed to enforcement, and says participating businesses won't be identified. But 14,000 visits says something about the resources now directed at the Charter, and about the scrutiny businesses in Québec should expect.

Despite the number of complaints and notices issued, the OQLF has also shown that it will reverse itself. In August 2025, it told a Montréal pub to change its sign, then withdrew the demand within days and called its own request premature. The episode was widely reported, and the OQLF acknowledged the strength of the reaction.

For the time being, we aren't aware of any penal proceedings or court-imposed fines grounded specifically in the amended trademark provisions since they came into force. Enforcement has largely run through notices, orders, and negotiation.

The takeaway for business owners: a first notice is a serious position of the OQLF but an opening one, not necessarily a final one.

Protecting your business

Signage is visible and expensive to fix, so it often gets a business’s attention. Similarly, products on the shelf are central to operations, so they tend to get dealt with immediately. Conversely, digital content is cheap to fix and easy to overlook— and that’s where complaints are simple for any member of the public to generate.

As such, attention should be paid to channels that are easy to overlook. For instance, websites and social media accounts are treated as commercial publications under the Charter and have come under scrutiny by the OQLF.

Reported examples include a Montréal bakery warned about English-language TikTok videos, and a Gatineau café told to translate its Instagram posts even though its Facebook page already operated in French.

What to do now

Don't wait for a notice from the OQLF to find out you aren't compliant; audit your signage, packaging, and trademarks now. The complaint numbers make it clear that enforcement is active and not slowing down anytime soon.

Next: look at the channels that often go unaudited. Product packaging got everyone’s attention in 2024 and 2025, but websites, social accounts, e-commerce listings, and vehicle signage frequently did not.

There are other steps worth taking, but the right ones depend on your products and services. Much like the trademarks themselves, each is somewhat unique, and there's no one-size-fits-all approach. That's where we can help.

Fillmore Riley LLP's Trademarks Practice

If you have questions about how to best position your trademark portfolio, please contact a member of our trademark practice group. We’re happy to hear from you.