Licenses and Profits Flashcards
License - generally
The license is a mere privilege to enter another’s land for some delineated purpose. Unlike an easement, a license is not an interest in land, it’s merely a privilege revocable at the will of the licensor. A license is personal to the licensee, and thus is inalienable. Any attempt to transfer a license results and revocation by operation of law. 
License - creation
A writing is not needed to create a license because it is not subject to the statute of frauds
A failed attempt to create an easement results in a license. Thus, if a grantor orally grants an easement for more than a year, it is unenforceable because it is not in writing. The grantee does not have a valid easement, but does have a license.
License - revocation
Licenses are freely revocable, at the wheel of the licensor, unless estoppel applies to bar revocation. Note the classic cases:
Ticket cases: like tickets to see a show. A ticket creates a freely revocable license.
Neighbors talking by the fence and one neighbor says that they can have a right away across the land. That is not an easement because an oral easement is not enforceable because it violates the statute of fraud so instead a license has been created. 
License - estoppel
When will a stoppable apply to bar revocation? Only when the licensee has invested substantial money or labor or both in reasonable reliance on the licenses continuation. The license becomes an easement by a stoppable, which lasts until the holder receives sufficient benefit to reimburse him for his expenditures.
License - license coupled with an interest
A license coupled with an interest is irrevocable as long as the interest lasts. For example, the buyer of a chattel may enter the sellers land to remove the chattel, or if future interest holder may enter and inspect the land for waste. 
Profit
The profit entitles it told her to enter the servant land and take from it some resources, for example, the soil, some substance of the soil, like minerals, timber or oil, or some product of the property like fish or game.
To create and terminate profits, all of the rules, governing creation, alienation, and termination of easements are applicable to profits. In addition, a profit may be extinguished through surcharge which is misuse that overly and wrongfully burdens, the servient estate. 
