26 



I will be happy to provide the NSF study to you. I think there 

 is one other study that went and looked at that from one other 

 agency, but it has been far more productive than one would nor- 

 mally expect a Government research program to be. 



Chairman TORKILDSEN. The larger point I would like to move 

 into now, I guess it goes back to the idea of having definitions as 

 to what constitutes mnds that have to be counted toward the set 

 aside. Is there a standardization process within that? I think it is 

 mentioned in generic terms, but is there a standard process by 

 which every agency has to meet the same type of definitions or are 

 agencies given broad latitude to decide what funding needs to be 

 counted for the set aside for SBIR? Dr. Barish. 



Dr. Barish. I think the law is fairly clear and it says that if an 

 agency has over $100 million of extramural research and develop- 

 ment funds, then it has to have an SBIR Program. Extramural 

 means research supported outside employees of the agency. What 

 we do in our agency is take the research and development budget 

 and estimate within each of the departmental elements how much 

 of it is extramural, and that forms the basis of the SBIR funds. We 

 take 2 percent of that to fund Phase I and Phase II SBIR projects. 

 I may mention that in the DOE we have spent every single dollar 

 of that SBIR set aside on Phase I and Phase II projects for 12 years 

 in a row. 



Chairman Torkildsen. Dr. Norwood. 



Dr. Norwood. I concur in that. 



Chairman TORKILDSEN. Just a very small question. Mr. Little, in 

 your testimony you mentioned that you have quite a bit of exports. 

 Could you give us a percentage of what your company sales are in 

 terms of exports? 



Mr. Little. My company sales were $18 million last year and I 

 believe $4 million were exports. 



Chairman Torkildsen. So pretty significant. For Mr. Neal or 

 anyone on the panel, has there been any research done on — while 

 it is not a primary goal of it — ^how furthering the SBIR Program 

 can lead these small companies, not only to sell to the Government 

 but to sell across our boundaries. Has there been any work done 

 in that area? 



Mr. Glover. We are doing some right now. We are looking at the 

 patents that are granted to U.S. firms, SBIR firms versus the over- 

 all market to try to determine if there is some international pat- 

 ents, where we stand with international patents, and what is hap- 

 pening there. One of the real problems that we recognize exists is 

 small firms by and large do not file for foreign patents as fre- 

 quently or in the same proportion as large firms do. 



So quite often the small firms do not have the resources to go 

 file the foreign patents. It is a serious problem. We are looking at 

 that fairly carefully. We will have a study done. It is funded for 

 this year. It will be coming out later this year and we will be able 

 to look and see that and we ask them specifically to look at SBIR 

 award winners as a sub-class of that survey. 



Chairman Torkildsen. Mr. Neal, would you like to add to that? 



Mr. Neal. Yes, as part of our larger effort at the Small Business 

 Administration, we are trying to take our SBIR award winners and 

 include them in our efforts to get them involved in international 



