I would argue (playing devil's advocate in favor of software patents) that a new /piece of/ software is decidedly not abstract, it is concrete and it has an abs

I would argue (playing devil's advocate in favor of software patents) that a new /piece of/ software is decidedly not abstract, it is concrete and it has an abstract part that is (in the US today) patentable. What's not patentable is "old idea, now on a computer for the first time" -- covering any implementation of "old idea" that nobody thought to put on a computer before, "but on a computer." That's clearly abstract. It's not an implementation. There are no implementation-specific details to put in the patent as claims (they would have to stand up to the obviousness test either individually or as a group). With nothing new except "on a computer" or "on a mobile device" it's not novel or specific and therefore not patentable. I'm actually not going to argue the point "now if you HAD a specific implementation" because I'm not sure I actually believe in patents (or more specifically software patents) at all, but I do believe that even without a patent: if you have some source code that your competition doesn't, and you made it... and they acquire it somehow without getting a license, there are already copyright laws that protect you (so long as you can establish your own original ownership of that work) if they should decide to rip it off wholesale.