It feels like a distinction without a difference: trying to apply the same logic to something that is material and not just bits in a computer:
You'd be saying you didn't pay for a house, instead you paid an architect to come up with the blueprint and paid the salaries and purchases of a construction team hour by hour for X months to execute on the design, additional work included, until you got a satisfying product. An accountant looking at it afterwards would still tell you you now have an asset estimated at Y thousands on the market.
> you can not choose to sell it to someone else
You can of course sell a developped product or a service to another company. Or even just the research part if it would cost enough to the buyer to reproduce it.
> you paid an architect to come up with the blueprint
You didn't pay the architect to work on the blueprint, you paid FOR the blueprint.
The blueprint is an asset, architect's time is not. You are not the employer of the architect, you are their client. The business transaction is money-for-blueprint. Whereas with an inhouse software developer the business-transaction is salary-for-time-spent.
If the software developer does not come up with a working program you can not take away their already earned salary. Whereas if the architect does not give you the blueprint you don't have to pay for it.
And once you get the blueprint you can sell it to someone else, it is an asset. Once the SW-developer-employee goes home you might or might not be able to sell their work-products to somebody else, because maybe the program does not run. If it does not run you can not sue the employee. If the architect's blueprints do not produce a working house you can sue them.
You'd be saying you didn't pay for a house, instead you paid an architect to come up with the blueprint and paid the salaries and purchases of a construction team hour by hour for X months to execute on the design, additional work included, until you got a satisfying product. An accountant looking at it afterwards would still tell you you now have an asset estimated at Y thousands on the market.
> you can not choose to sell it to someone else
You can of course sell a developped product or a service to another company. Or even just the research part if it would cost enough to the buyer to reproduce it.