Cite as: 527 U. S. 666 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
As to the first: The hallmark of a protected property interest is the right to exclude others. That is "one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property." Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U. S. 164, 176 (1979). That is why the right that we all possess to use the public lands is not the "property" right of anyone—hence the sardonic maxim, explaining what economists call the "tragedy of the commons," 1 res publica, res nullius. The Lanham Act may well contain provisions that protect constitutionally cognizable property interests—notably, its provisions dealing with infringement of trademarks, which are the "property" of the owner because he can exclude others from using them. See, e. g., K mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 485 U. S. 176, 185-186 (1988) ("Trademark law, like contract law, confers private rights, which are themselves rights of exclusion. It grants the trademark owner a bundle of such rights"). The Lanham Act's false-advertising provisions, however, bear no relationship to any right to exclude; and Florida Prepaid's alleged misrepresentations concerning its own products intruded upon no interest over which petitioner had exclusive dominion.
Unsurprisingly, petitioner points to no decision of this Court (or of any other court, for that matter) recognizing a property right in freedom from a competitor's false advertising about its own products. The closest petitioner comes is dicta in International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U. S. 215, 236 (1918), where the Court found equity jurisdiction over an unfair-competition claim because "[t]he rule that a court of equity concerns itself only in the protection of property rights treats any civil right of a pecuniary nature as a property right." But to say that a court of equity "treats any civil right of a pecuniary nature as a property right" is not to say that all civil rights of a pecuniary nature are property rights. In fact, when one reads the full pas-1 See Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, 162 Science 1243 (1968).
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