An inventor should be prepared to spend several years of pendency while waiting for a patent to issue.  At present, the average time it takes a patent application to ultimately issue as a United States patent is roughly 26 months.  One can generally expect a first office action roughly 22-24 months after submitting a non-provisional application for a patent, thus there is a significant amount of waiting in this process.

Most patent applications go through a process of being initially rejected by a patent examiner followed by patent prosectution where a patent attorney or agent prepares amendments and/or arguments as to why the examiner rejected the application.  A well researched and meticulously prepared patent application can shave months or years off of this process by avoiding unnecessary amendments or office actions.

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