Also known as: profits a prendre · profit à prendre · profits à prendre · profit prendre
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
An easement that confers the right to enter and remove timber, minerals, oil, gas, game, or other substances from land in the possession of another.
Patrick Phan owns a wooded parcel and grants Pierre Poulin the right to enter and cut designated stands of timber for commercial sale. Poulin builds access roads and removes thousands of board feet each season. When Phan sells the land to a third party, the buyer attempts to bar Poulin from further entry. The right survives the sale because it authorizes both entry and removal of a natural resource from the land.
Preston Pratt acquires a ranch subject to longstanding claims by neighboring landowners who have long grazed livestock, gathered firewood, and hunted on the property. The neighbors assert these rights originated in an early settlement and have continued openly for decades. Pratt seeks to exclude them. The claimed rights qualify as profits because they permit entry onto the ranch and removal of natural products such as grass, wood, and game.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
A profit authorizes both entry onto land and removal of a natural resource such as timber or game. An ordinary easement authorizes only use or access without removal. The distinction turns on whether the holder may sever and take part of the land itself.
Supporting sources
Yes. Like other servitudes, the burden of a profit runs with the land when the profit is properly created by grant or prescription. A buyer takes subject to the profit and cannot revoke it as if it were a mere license.
Courts examine substance rather than label. When the writing grants entry plus removal of a resource for a fixed term and valuable consideration, the interest is a profit even if the parties called it a license. Repeated short-term renewals and explicit revocation clauses, however, usually prevent the right from ripening into a profit.
A profit may arise by express grant, prescription, or implication, but a writing satisfying the statute of frauds is ordinarily required for an express profit of more than one year. Informal permission alone creates only a revocable license.
…briefing of this twenty-one year-old litigation, agree that the rights at issue are most appropriately characterized as profits à prendre. A profit à prendre—in modern parlance, a profit—"is an easement that confers the right to enter and remove timber, minerals, oil, gas, game, or other substances from land in the possession…