Topic summary
Tangible asset
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Asset.
Intangible assets
Intangible assets lack physical substance and usually are very hard to evaluate. They include patents, copyrights, franchises & licenses, goodwill, trademarks, trade names, software, etc. These assets are (according to US GAAP) amortized to expense over 5 to 40 years with the exception of goodwill.