LICENSE. In general, an authority given by one person to another to do certain acts which hut for such authority would be unlawful. Spe cifically. the term includes licenses by a land owner to come upon or otherwise use his land and licenses by municipal or other authority to ply certain trades or callings.
Licenses of the former sort are either execu to•y, where the act authorized has not been done, or executed, where it has been done. At law all such licenses may be revoked by the grantor, un less the license be coupled with an interest in the land, and the same rule prevails in equity courts, except that the latter sometimes hold that an executed license, where the license was based on a consideration, is not revocable at the pleas ure of the grantor. A court of equity re gards such an executed license as an executed contract, one of the parties to which, the licensee, has gone too far to be put back into his former position. A license, though revoked, saves the licensee harmless from liability or re sponsibility for such acts as he has clone there under. A license in regard to land is not to be confused with an easement (q.v.). An executed
license' which puts an end to an easement of the grantor in the licensee's land is irrevocable.
The most common licenses of the second sort are licenses to sell liquor, to exercise the trade or calling of a peddler, to give theatrical or other public entertainments, to hold public meet ings, to use the streets for processions. etc. Such acts are in themselves innocuous and do not con stitute a violation of the common law, but are generally restricted by statute or by local mu nicipal ordinances in the interests of public order and safety. Such licenses are a matter of statutory regulation.
The term license is used in international law for the authority given by a State engaged in war to its subjects or the subjects of the State with which it is at war, to engage in a trade forbidden in time of war. The right to give such licenses is original with the sovereign power, and they may be given by commanding officers in the army or navy as its delegates. A license in patent law is a permission to make or sell a patented article.