Is there a word for a resource you retain even though you give it away?

For example, if you give away or sell a book, you don't have it anymore. But if you give away or sell an e-book, you still retain the resource you have sold or given away.

You could think of this more abstract, too. For example, if you're an artist, you can "give away" your skills by making a drawing for someone and you have not lost your skills. However you can't get back the time it took to make the drawing, so your time is given away without you being able to retain it.

More poetically, love is something you can give away and you still have just as much to give.

Is there a word for this type of resource?

Solution 1:

The term for the goods that are such that their use by one person does not diminish their availability to others is nonrivalrous goods or nonrival goods. Accounts of the contrast between rivalrous and nonrivalrous goods are available in numerous sources; a couple of the easily accessible ones are http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rival_good.asp and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalrous. While this term captures precisely what the OP seems to be aiming at, it is a technical term, which will be readily understood only within certain theoretical contexts. The term undepletable, offered in another answer on this page, is less precise (it encompasses more than just nonrivalrous goods), but may be better suited for other contexts.

Incidentally, even though both nonrivalrous goods and nonrival goods can be found in the literature, the former is a better term, because what is relevant is not whether the goods themselves are rivals, but whether they generate rivalry among those who seek them.

Solution 2:

How about using the word 'Perennial" since it indicates something that is everlasting, used and yet retained.

Solution 3:

They seem to be called virtual (or digital) products by e-commerce software.