A court challenge to Bill 101's sign law may be heading to the Supreme Court.

The four-year-old fight over the language of signs suffered a setback last December when the Quebec Court of Appeal agreed with two lower court rulings that said the law is necessary to protect the French language.

Now lawyers have asked for permission to appeal before Canada's top court.

"We think the Court of Appeal got it wrong by concluding the French language was vulnerable in Quebec," said Brent Tyler who represents several small businesses who were fined for having signs, packaging or web content only in English. The law says there can be English but French has to be predominant.

Tyler said the judges made errors in their ruling - while French-speakers may be on the decline in Montreal,

`"Every single indicator, every other trend is either neutral or favourable to French."

Tyler also cites the radical changes to the linguistic face of Quebec.

"The application of that rule in Montreal is instead of reflecting the demographic reality of Quebec, it covers it up," said Tyler.

Tyler argues it also doesn`t justify infringing on Charter rights.

"There`s no doubt that if this case was to lose then the Office (de la langue française) is going to go after people with a vengeance, there`s no doubt about that. Because the only thing that's been slowing them down is this case," said Tyler.

Tyler said such a legal fight won't be fast or cheap so they're asking for donations.

Tyler said it was important for his clients to try to make their case before the Supreme Court and even the UN if necessary.

"There's absolutely no way that our clients will ever accept that English has to be reduced to marked inferiority," said Tyler.