An easement is an interest in land that is owned by another person and gives the easement holder or easement owner the right to use or control the other person’s land in some limited way—such as the right to drive across another person’s private property to access a public highway or other public road (an ingress-and-egress easement).

There are many different types of easements, depending on the nature of the use of the land—such light-and-air easements; mineral easements; timber easements; noise easements; and railroad easements—and how the easement was acquired—an express easement; an implied easement; a prescriptive easement; an easement by necessity; or an easement by estoppel, for example.

There are also negative easements that prohibit the owner of a property (the servient-estate) from doing something, such as building a home or structure that blocks the view or sunlight for an easement holder—often an adjoining property owner (the dominant estate).

Public utility companies (gas, electricity, telephone, water, sewer, cable, etc.) often have easements to place utility transmission, distribution, or power lines on private property and access them for installation, repair, and maintenance.

Laws regarding easements vary from state to state and may be located in a state’s court opinions (also known as its common law or case law) or in its statutes.

In Iowa, easements are recognized as a type of property interest that allows the holder to use land owned by someone else for a specific purpose. Easements can be created in various ways, including express grants in deeds or other legal documents (express easements), by implication from the circumstances of the property use (implied easements), by continuous and open use over a certain period (prescriptive easements), out of necessity for access to landlocked property (easement by necessity), or by reliance on the landowner's representations (easement by estoppel). Iowa law also acknowledges negative easements, which restrict the landowner from performing certain actions that could affect the easement holder's rights, such as obstructing light or air. Utility companies often have statutory easements that allow them to install and maintain infrastructure on private property. The specifics of easement law in Iowa can be found in state statutes, such as the Iowa Code, and in the decisions of Iowa courts, which contribute to the state's common law on the subject.