Accounts of property tend to define it as a right to exclude and treat use-privileges as incidental by-products of that right. In contrast, this paper treats recognition of use-privileges as prior and then asks what sorts of rights might be justified in their support. I defend this approach against arguments made by Douglas & Ben McFarlane. As the concept of “use” depends upon that of “thing,” I also attempt to shore up the reliance on “things” as central to the concept of property, arguing for a concept of “thing” that encompasses any discrete and intelligible nexus of human activity with respect to which human purposes may come into conflict; this renders intellectual property rights straightforwardly intelligible as usufructary interests in things. I also respond to Essert’s argument that property should jettison any reliance on things and simply view property rights as aimed at excluding others from classes of activity. Here my contention is that the identification of some discrete “thing” as an object of property provides a necessary focal point for the concepts of use and interest that are both functionally and normatively essential to property as a human institution.