Definition
A profit a prendre (also written profit à prendre) is a right held by one person to enter the land of another and take something of value from it. The thing taken may be part of the soil itself — gravel, minerals, peat, or timber — or natural produce growing or living on the land, such as fish, game, or crops. The right runs with the land and is treated as an interest in real property, not merely a personal license.
Profit a prendre is distinguished from a simple easement in that it involves the right to remove something from the land, not merely to use or pass over it. A right of way grants passage; a profit a prendre grants extraction.
Two principal forms exist based on who may exercise the right:
- Appurtenant: The profit benefits a dominant tenement and runs with that land. The holder of the dominant estate may exercise the right because of that ownership.
- In gross: The profit belongs to an individual or entity independently of any ownership of neighboring land. It is a personal property right that may be granted, assigned, or inherited separately.
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Common Language
This term has no meaningful counterpart in ordinary English. "Profit" in common usage refers to financial gain, and the phrase as a whole is borrowed from Law French with no everyday equivalent. The legal meaning bears no relationship to the common understanding of "profit" as monetary surplus.
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Common Confusion
PROFIT A PRENDRE vs. EASEMENT: These are closely related but distinct. An easement grants the right to use another's land in a defined way — typically for access or a specific purpose — without removing anything from it. A profit a prendre grants the right to enter and take. Courts and historical sources sometimes classify profit a prendre as a "species" of easement, which is technically imprecise and has caused conflation in older authorities. Modern property law treats profit a prendre as a separate category of non-possessory interest in land, broader in scope than an easement because it includes the right of severance.
PROFIT A PRENDRE vs. LICENSE: A license is a personal, revocable permission to do something on another's land. It creates no property interest and does not run with the land. A profit a prendre is an interest in the estate itself — it binds successors, survives sale of the servient land, and may be conveyed independently of any personal relationship between grantor and grantee.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term appears inconsistently in historical sources, sometimes spelled with the French accent (à), sometimes without. Index searches in digitized case law may miss one variant or the other. Search both forms.
The characterization of profit a prendre as a "species of easement" in Bouvier's and in some nineteenth-century cases creates a trap for researchers. Courts applying easement doctrine to profits — particularly rules about scope, abandonment, or extinguishment — may reach different conclusions than courts applying profit-specific analysis. When tracing a holding about easements in older cases, confirm whether the court was actually dealing with a profit a prendre and applying easement rules by analogy.
The distinction between profits appurtenant and profits in gross carries significant practical weight in conveyancing and title research. A profit in gross that was validly granted to an individual may have descended through estates, been assigned, or been held by corporate successors — none of which would appear in a simple chain of title for the servient land. Title searches in jurisdictions with active mining, timber, or fishing industries must account for outstanding profits in gross that may not be indexed against the land record directly.
Jurisdictional treatment of assignability, particularly for profits in gross, was unsettled for much of the nineteenth century. Some courts limited assignability; others allowed it freely. Researchers should not assume uniform rules across time or geography.
The connection to extractive industries — oil and gas, coal, timber, fishing rights — means that profit a prendre doctrine appears with some frequency in regulatory and environmental law contexts, not only in pure property disputes. Law Mind encyclopedia coverage of this term extends into property law proper; researchers with questions touching natural resource extraction may need to work across subject areas.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's defines profit a prendre as "the right to take soil, gravel, minerals, and the like from the land of another" and characterizes it as both an interest in the estate and "a peculiar species of easements." This dual characterization — interest in the estate on one hand, species of easement on the other — reflects a genuine tension in nineteenth-century property thinking that Bouvier's does not fully resolve.
Bouvier's citation to Washburn on Easements is instructive: Washburn treated profits within his easement framework, which influenced how courts analyzed them through much of the nineteenth century. The characterization as a "species" of easement, while analytically useful for some purposes, obscured the ways in which profits operate differently — particularly the right of severance and the rules governing extinguishment.
Bouvier's acknowledgment that the right "may be the subject of a separate grant" and that it "is an interest in the estate" plants the seeds of the modern distinction between profits appurtenant and profits in gross, but does not develop it. Researchers relying solely on Bouvier's will find a starting point, not a complete framework.
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Jurisdictional Note
American jurisdictions generally follow the appurtenant/in gross distinction, but the assignability of profits in gross and the rules for their extinguishment vary. English common law treated profits in gross with suspicion; American courts, influenced by commercial realities in extractive industries, were generally more permissive. Researchers working with nineteenth-century American cases should not assume that English authority on profits in gross is directly applicable.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia: "Profits — Right to Take (Profit a Prendre)"
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