royalty interest
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 356 U.S. 260 - Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. P G Lake · 1958Most cited · 1,055 citing opinions
a right to receive a specified percentage of all oil and gas produced but, unlike the oil payment, is not limited to a specified sum of money. The royalty interest lasts during the entire term of the lease.
How the Supreme Court has restated “royalty interest”
Each Supreme Court definition of “royalty interest,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “royalty interest”
Court decisions citing the 3 opinions that defined “royalty interest” — 2,414 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 3 definitions, chronological · 1930–1958
- ORIGINAL
a right attached and incident to his ownership or reversionary interest in the land
The holder of a royalty interest—that is, a right to receive a specified percentage of all oil and gas produced during the term of the lease—is deemed to have an economic interest in the oil in place which is depleted by severance.