[mchannon]

I was referring to "patent process", not "filing process".

Filing application until issue of patent is only the very beginning. You have renewal payments at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after issue. If you get a restriction requirement, you get to start the clock over each time as your single patent application blossoms into multiple, or dozens, or hundreds, if it's deemed worth the expense. Continuations-in-part and reissues can take it even further.

And that doesn't even bring litigation into the picture. Your patent can be long expired before you file an infringement lawsuit (because you can demonstrate they infringed when it was valid), and that by itself can add 10+ years, as we're seeing in many cases out of the courts.

For what it's worth, I'm on year 9 of the filing-to-issue process for my first patent.