> I.e. easements that come from law rather than seller stipulation?

A lot of convservation land in America is put under non-governmental easement [1]. The owner puts a restriction on the deed prohibiting development. They typically require emininet domain powers to be removed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_easement

The government could probably choose to define the terms used to define retail activities in the covenant as meaningless.

Menard's does this in Michigan, and then tries to get the taxes on their replacement stores to be based on the restricted property. It's nuts.

We can probably define a legal conservation easement as one that prevents further development on a piece of land, as opposed to regulating the uses and types of development.

conservation easements derive from seller stipulations:

"Sure NGO XYZ, I'll sell this land to iff you accept a long-term restriction on it's use"

There are a few historical types of deed restrictions that have been judged illegal and unenforceable. A corporation placing a deed restriction on a parcel to prevent competition with itself sounds like an illegal class of restriction