I would highly recommend Patent it Yourself from NOLO Press. It goes into great detail about claims. As a software person, you're at an advantage in understandi

I would highly recommend Patent it Yourself from NOLO Press. It goes into great detail about claims. As a software person, you're at an advantage in understanding the logical language of claims. One important aspect is the independent claim and the dependent claim (a dependent claim starts with language like "The X of claim Y, wherein..."). Each dependent claim is combined with the associated independent claim to form a complete statement. To reinforce what dctoedt said, the claims are all that matter. The description is used to provide a human readable background and to show someone how they might implement your invention. Only in rare circumstances is the description used to limit the claims (primarily in the case of means claims, I believe). IANAL; this should not be construed as legal advice.