One of the challenges until recently (as outlined in that link) was:
There are also some crazy “use it or lose it” laws that say that you can’t buy the right to extract a natural resource and not use it. When the high-bidder for an oil and gas lease near Arches National Park turned out to be an environmentalist the BLM cancelled the contract!
A bit of a tangent, but economist Alex Tabarrok has talked about buying coal mines in order to not mine coal
One of the challenges until recently (as outlined in that link) was:
I’m pretty sure there’s no such use it or lose it law for patents, since patent trolls already exist.