Task: songer_r_fed

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Note that if an individual is listed by name, but their appearance in the case is as a government official, then they should be counted as a government rather than as a private person. For example, in the case "Billy Jones & Alfredo Ruiz v Joe Smith" where Smith is a state prisoner who brought a civil rights suit against two of the wardens in the prison (Jones & Ruiz), the following values should be coded: number of appellants that fall into the category "natural persons" =0 and number that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials" =2. A similar logic should be applied to businesses and associations. Officers of a company or association whose role in the case is as a representative of their company or association should be coded as being a business or association rather than as a natural person. However, employees of a business or a government who are suing their employer should be coded as natural persons. Likewise, employees who are charged with criminal conduct for action that was contrary to the company policies should be considered natural persons.
If the title of a case listed a corporation by name and then listed the names of two individuals that the opinion indicated were top officers of the same corporation as the appellants, then the number of appellants should be coded as three and all three were coded as a business (with the identical detailed code). Similar logic should be applied when government officials or officers of an association were listed by name.
Your specific task is to determine the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the respondent is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

PER CURIAM.
In this appeal, Doyle questions the wisdom of our decision in Sheehan v. Doyle, 513 F.2d 895 (1st Cir. 1975). In that case, Sheehan had sought documentary discovery from Doyle, and the latter had defended on grounds that Doyle, a nonresident alien, was beyond the jurisdiction and venue of the district court. We sustained Doyle, but on the ground that 35 U.S.C. § 24 “does not confer jurisdiction upon the district court, acting on its own, to grant Rule 34 discovery directly, whether against a nonresident alien or a resident citizen.” 513 F.2d at 898. In this, we relied heavily on the en banc decision of the third circuit in Frilette v. Kimberlin, 508 F.2d 205 (1975). In the present proceeding, it is Doyle who seeks discovery; and, after being peremptorily turned down by the district court on the basis of our decision in Sheehan v. Doyle, he brings this appeal.
We first dispose of Doyle’s argument that as the discovery he seeks is by a subpoena duces tecum, it is not precluded by our earlier decision. The thrust of that decision was that 35 U.S.C. § 24 provided for judicial subpoenas to be used in aid of contested Patent Office cases (including for purposes of broad-based Federal Rules discovery) but only to the extent permitted by the Commissioner of Patents. What we rejected, and this would apply as much in the present case as in the earlier one, was the use of the federal district courts “as alternative forums of first resort rather than as forums acting strictly in aid of the primary proceeding.” 513 F.2d at 899. Thus the district court correctly interpreted our decision as ruling out administratively unauthorized discovery of this nature.
Here, if discovery proceeds, it will be more of the free-wheeling discovery which the third circuit and this circuit have determined Congress did not mean to authorize. Indeed, the very nature of the discovery here sought points up our earlier objections. Doyle seeks to probe whether Sheehan was the actual inventor, and Sheehan argues that that issue is entirely irrelevant to a patent office interference. Since the discovery proceeding is totally separate from the interference, and since no one from the Patent Office is a party or has purported to outline the scope of discovery, the district judge would have to rule on this and similar contentions with little to guide him but the parties’ conflicting ideas of what might or might not be deemed relevant by the Board of ^Patent Interferences. Plainly the’issue of what is relevant to its own proceeding can best be determined, at least initially, by the administrative agency in question. For over 400 district judges scattered throughout the nation to attempt to rule on such questions in a vacuum scarcely seems sensible, and, as pointed out in Frilette, is a procedure without precedent elsewhere.
This brings us to whether or not we should abandon the construction of 35 U.S.C. § 24 that we adopted in Sheehan v. Doyle. We see no reason now to change our mind. Plainly, as we were well aware last spring, § 24 admits of more than one reading. But for reasons stated both in Frilette and our own opinion, we can see little sense in the sort of proceeding that a contrary interpretation has generated. Were the legislative history and statute clear, we would have no recourse; but the legislative history is totally devoid of any indication that Congress had in mind such an anomalous and unusual result, and we are unwilling to settle for what we perceive to be a fundamentally unsound approach where an equally or more persuasive interpretation of the statute exists.
We regret the uncertainty which a circuit split creates. There are, however, possible remedies. The Supreme Court may think it desirable to terminate the divergent interpretations that now exist. Alternatively, other circuits may follow the third circuit in abandoning the earlier construction. And the Commissioner of Patents, exercising such powers as he now has, may find that he is able to contribute to clarification of the situation. Finally, of course, Congress may by legislative enactment make clear its wishes in this unsettled area.
Affirmed.
From the Patent Office’s granting of several continuances to permit court-sponsored discovery, Doyle argues tacit Patent Office approval of these proceedings. However, until 1975, all circuits considering the issue had ruled that independent discovery of this nature was in order, and the Patent Office had every reason to feel that it was obliged to go along willy nilly. Thus we draw no inferences from any Patent Office continuances.
See Note, Discovery in Patent Interference Proceedings, 89 Harv.L.Rev. 573 (1976), supporting our reading of the statute and view of the statutory history.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officialss"? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 0