Pithos has announced that with this week’s hotfix, a change will occur to some Planar Essences when you unsocket them with a Planar Essence Removal Device (RIFT Store -> Services).
Once this week’s hotfix goes live, unsocketing a bind on equip planar essence from a planar focus will give you a bind on *pickup* version of that planar essence, which will immediately bind to your character as soon as it enters your inventory.
Effectively, all the essences that currently say “Bind on Equip” but don’t really bind to your character now will. If you want to unsocket one of these essences and trade it to another character, you have until the hotfix to do so.
This is probably mainly targeting essences gained from Nightmare Rifts which are Bind on Equip. Players would use them and then when they upgraded a decent piece they’d use a Planar Essence Removal Device and then sell the old essence. In short, if you want to remove some essences from your focus that are ‘Bind on Equip’ that you were originally planning to sell or trade to other characters, do so prior to this week’s hotfix (Usually Wednesday morning for NA and Thursday morning for EU).
This change will not affect Bind on Account items in your planar focus. You should still be able to remove them and send them to your alts.
RiftGrate 
You know, I know the NMR essences are big on trades right now, and will continue to be, but with the timing of this, I wonder if it’s actually for possible upcoming Fae Yule essences. Those Dark Ice essences last year first appeared for Fae Yule, and they actually suffer this same bug (supposed to be BoE but once unsocketed you can sell/trade).
Makes me wonder. Here’s hoping for awesome Fae Yule essences 😀 (like one per class, not full sets obviously).
Ah, never thought of that. That’s a good point Serein! Hoping for rings/essences for Fae Yule (and not just Earrings like Autumn Harvest).