Intangible assets refer to non-monetary assets held by listed companies for producing goods or providing services, leasing them to others or for management purposes, which have no physical form and have a service life of more than one year. Generally, it includes patent right, trademark right, non-patented technology, copyright, land use right, goodwill, franchise right and lease right. The outstanding feature of intangible assets is that there is no physical form, which only shows that the company has legal rights, or that the company has the ability to obtain higher-than-average benefits.

According to the characteristics of intangible assets and accounting standards, the intangible assets developed within the company should be priced according to the actual cost, but the expenditure on acquiring intangible assets must be identifiable and accurately pointed out before it can be included in the cost. Otherwise, even if the company owns an intangible asset, it cannot be capitalized and recorded as an intangible asset. Such as goodwill, except for company merger, shall not be recorded at a fixed price.

Because intangible assets have no material loss, there is no need to accrue depreciation. In order to correctly calculate the company's operating profit and loss, according to the principle of prudence, intangible assets should be amortized on average according to their service life from the year of use. If there is no specified service life, it should generally be amortized within ten years. If the value of intangible assets is affected by external conditions and the effective period of use changes obviously, its permanently reduced value will be included in the current profit and loss.

When analyzing the intangible assets of listed companies, investors should look at whether the contents recorded in the intangible assets are accurate and whether the amortization period of the intangible assets conforms to the actual situation. For example, with the rapid development of science and technology, the actual service life of patent rights has been affected. In addition, it depends on the utilization effect of intangible assets.