Skills and traditions
Skills are an important asset. Several businesses exist accross generations to this day mainly because of the social value attached to conservation of skills and traditions.
Copyrights, patents and trademarks
Aka intellectual property, a much criticized term because it draws a analogy to physical property which fails in some ways.
Patents
The purpose of patents is to provide incentives for invention and discovery.
They work in some cases (eg: chemicals and pharmaceuticals) and fail in others (eg: software).
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