Category Archives: Businesses

Québec Adopts its Charter of the French Language v. 3.0

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The province of Québec recently sought to modernize its Charter of the French Language (the “Charter“), a piece of legislation many Quebecers still call “Bill 101” to this day. After partially amending this statute in 2019, the Québec government overhauled it earlier this month, by adopting Bill 96. Through this bill, Québec is expanding the obligations imposed on organizations and businesses, to use French whenever (and however) interacting with residents of the province.

Though I don’t want to get into all the details this morning, it seems worthwhile to provide you with an overview of the kinds of changes this new version of the Charter brings us, so here it is so as to provide you with an idea of what we’re now facing:

  • A general obligation that all organizations serve their clients in French, by providing them with any and all documents and documentation in French, as the case may be;
  • A major change of the rule as to the display of non-French trademarks, by doing away with the exception relating to the common law trademarks. From now on, only common law trademarks composed solely of French words will be tolerated under the Charter, while the rest of trademarks used in Québec will have to be actually registered to pass muster;
  • Reinforcement of the provisions relating to public display of trademarks (e.g. signage) by now requiring that the overall appearance provide substantially more space to French, as compared to other languages such as English (i.e. store fronts should show about twice as much content in French than other languages, not taking into account the trademark);
  • Introduction of a new rule stating that adhesion contracts must now be available in French as a condition of validity for the contracts that are actually entered into by Quebecers, I including but not limited to those for consumers;
  • Lowering from 50 employees to 25, the threshold above which organizations must adopt and apply a francization program;
  • Adoption of stricter rules as to job postings in French and when an organization may require that job applicants have language skills unrelated to French;
  • Addition of a new rule that all written documents and documentation provided by employers to their employees systematically be in French.

It also seems worthwhile to mention that Bill 96 also adds a very American twist to the Charter, by introducing a private right of action. Once in force, this will allow individuals to sue businesses that violate the Charter, so as to obtain either injunctions or (and yes, this is what’s going to have business owners pay attention) damages and punitive damages. As if often the case whenever such rights are introduced in a piece of legislation, class actions will be the first type of proceedings we can expect them to be used for.

I should mention, finally, that most changes outlined above will not come into effect for 3 years, so as to provide businesses with a transition period during which they can bring their organizations in line with the new rules. So, June 1st, 2025 is the deadline you should remember, to update all your practices and your way of doing things in Québec. Mark your calendars!

So, is your organization in-line with all this? Probably not. If it is not, then you now have less than 3 years to do your homework!

Appeal Court Confirms No Moral Rights Issue Triggered by Sale of Books in Discount Stores

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The Québec Court of Appeal recently confirmed a 2021 decision about the sale of books from the series Les Chevaliers d’émeraude in discount stores, something the author had objected to, in a lawsuit alleging (inter alia) that the sale of unsold and unsellable copies violated her moral rights to the integrity of her works.

The decision at issue, 91439 Canada ltée (Éditions de Mortagne) v. Robillard (2022 QCCA 76), essentially refused to contradict the initial judgment as to the issue of moral rights, thereby confirming the sale at rebate of unsold copies by the editor, and then by the rebate retailer Dollarama, did not pose a copyright (moral rights) problem, in this specific case anyway.

Though thousands of copies of the books at issue were sold off in a manner that resulted in left-over copies being essentially sold off (at $2.00) in certain discount stores (from the Dollarama retail chain), the court concludes there simply was insufficient evidence as to the actual condition of the copies that went on sale at Dollarama stores to be able to conclude anything as to the integrity of the works.

In short, though some other author may eventually be able to make such an argument, if a similar case ever gets to court, the plaintiff would have to bring forth much more evidence that the works had been defaced, cut short, deformed or somehow affected by the poor condition of the books at issue, before a Canadian court can entertain the idea that it should be equated to a violation of moral rights.

Major Update of the Canadian Government Login Process for Businesses

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The Canadian government finally seems to have realized allowing individual agencies to create and manage credentials individually, for each business that may want to interact with governmental online services, simply does not make sense, including from a cybersecurity standpoint. Starting soon, users who want to login will have to go through a whole new system.

CIPO (the Canadian Intellectual Property Office) recently started offering information and training on the upcoming changes, so as to allow businesses to make the transition, including those that may need to interact with I.P.-related services, for example as to patents, trademarks or industrial designs.

The new system being deployed by the Canadian government will do away with ISED, the former system whereby businesses could create user IDs to login and interact with governmental online services.

The new identification process will involve each business creating an ID (called the GCKey) to which authorized individual users will have to be linked. The system will also require individuals to go through identification and authentication, to make sure they are the actual individual they purport to be and that they are indeed authorized by the organization at issue. Though you may think this was already the case, it was not.

One offshoot of this new method of allowing access by users on behalf of their organization is that it will do away with the sharing of credentials. Once implemented, it will no longer be possible for all users of an organization to “share” a single user ID (account), as was so frequently until now, for purposes of accessing governmental online services.

The new system will also force all user to use 2-step verification to login into their online account, also something most large organizations have been requiring for a while now. The actual implementation of the changes start March 28.