Royalty payment

A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or a fixed price per unit sold of an item of such, but there are also other modes and metrics of compensation. A royalty interest is the right to collect a stream of future royalty payments. A license agreement defines the terms under which a resource or property are licensed by one party to another, either without restriction or subject to a limitation on term, business or geographic territory, type of product, etc. License agreements can be regulated, particularly where a government is the resource owner, or they can be private contracts that follow a general structure. However, certain types of franchise agreements have comparable provisions. A landowner with petroleum or mineral rights to their property may license those rights to another party. In exchange for allowing the other party to extract the resources, the landowner receives either a resource rent, or a "royalty payment" based on the value of the resources sold. When a government owns the resource, the transaction often has to follow legal and regulatory requirements. In the United States, fee simple ownership of mineral rights is possible and payments of royalties to private citizens occurs quite often. Local taxing authorities may impose a severance tax on the unrenewable natural resources extracted or severed from within their authority. The Federal Government receives royalties on production on federal lands, managed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, formerly the Minerals Management Service. An example from Canada's northern territories is the federal Frontier Lands Petroleum Royalty Regulations. The royalty rate starts at 1% of gross revenues of the first 18 months of commercial production and increases by 1% every 18 months to a maximum of 5% until initial costs have been recovered, at which point the royalty rate is set at 5% of gross revenues or 30% of net revenues.