Napster trademark and name most valuable asset
Shawn Fanning named his company after his own nickname, which he acquired for having nappy hair, according to this Wall Street Journal story (subscription required):
As trademark lawyers and professors are quick to point out, the strongest trademarks are arbitrary or fanciful -- that is, either made-up words or words that bear no relationship to the goods or services with which they're used. For many business people, who often are eager to select a descriptive name, this is counterintuitive.
...Perhaps that's why an adult entertainment company made an offer valued at about $2.4 million to obtain Napster's trademark and domain name. Private Media Group of Barcelona, Spain, called Napster "one of the most recognized names in [peer-to-peer] file-swapping" and said that "with the Napster trademark," it planned to create a file-sharing network for adult content.
Notably absent from Private Media Group's announcement was any offer to buy the technology or hardware that ran Napster's file-swapping service. Instead, all it wants is Napster's trademark. With name recognition by millions of people and continuing traffic to what is now a defunct Web site, the "Napster" trademark apparently is more valuable than anything else Napster created.