Let’s say you are Reebok with total assets of 10B and total liabilities of ZERO. After cutting out 7B all the investment assets (stock and cash), inventory, factories, and plant equipment, you are left with 3B of intangibles.
These 3B includes 2.5B of copyrights, patents, etc
The conclusion is that if an outsider paid 10B for the company, he’d be missing 500M of thin air. The books call this “brand names”. Is this identical to “goodwill”? Or is a brand name something entirely different because you can copyright it, sell it, or rent it?