Task: songer_appnatpr

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 appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge.
In the court below American Safety Razor Corporation (hereafter called plaintiff), owner of two patents, charged Frings Brothers ' Company (hereafter called defendant) with infringement thereof. One patent, No. 1,739,280, was granted December 10, 1929, to M. B. Behrman for “Razor and blade therefor”; the other, No. 1,773,614, was granted August 19,1930, to G. Dalkowitz for a “Safety Razor.” On final hearing the court below dismissed the bill, entering a decree that the Behrman patent was void by reason of anticipation and by reason of want of patentable novelty over the prior art and that defendant, in making and furnishing blades to legitimate owners of plaintiff’s razors made by plaintiff under said patents, was not contributory infringer. From such deeree plaintiff appealed.
We avoid much needless repetition by referring to the illuminating opinion of the trial judge reported at 56 F.(2d) 449, 450. Therefrom it appears plaintiff makes and sells what it calls the “Gem Micromatic” razor, which consists of two distinct, separable, individual parts, namely, A, a frame adapted to hold a removable blade, and, B, a shaving blade adapted for use in such razor frame. With plaintiff’s alleged, exclusive right to make and sell such frame we are not here concerned, for the defendant does not make or sell such a frame. But it appears that when plaintiff’s customer, who bought and paid for the frame, later uses in the frame a blade made by a third party, such owner becomes an infringer and the defendant who furnishes the blade, knowing it is to bo so used, is a contributory infnnger. For on analysis it will be seen that in order to convict the defendant of contributory or secondary infringement, we must first be satisfied the user thereof would have been an original or primary infringer. It follows, therefore, that while this case is against the defendant blade maker, the underlying question is the right of the frame buyer- from plaintiff to unrestricted blade replacement. Such being the situation, the questions involved are twofold.
First. Is the defendant’s replacement blade an infringement of plaintiff’s patent, for, if it is, its use in plaintiffs razor frame or in any other type of frame is unlawful. Second. If the defendant’s blade is not an infringement, because unpatented, is its use by the owner of plaintiff’s patented frame unlawful? To those questions we address ourselves.
Turning then to the question whether the supply blade of defendant infringes plaintiff’s patent rights, we note that the safety razor art is a thoroughly occupied: field. Originally novel and radical in character and for years the subject of patentable novelty and the source of large profits, the field has been thoroughly developed, and as a result thereof and the employment of skilled engineering in its progress, improvement and development are naturally to be looked for. Moreover, courts in dealing with an art, originally pioneer in origin, must carefully scrutinize the constant efforts of those who have enjoyed a profitable patent monopoly to lengthen such monopoly by patents for non-inventive changes. Bearing this in mind, we inquire whether the blade of Behrman was really inventive in character or such an adaption or minor change as would naturally follow in the wake of such a threshed out field as the successful safety razor one had enjoyed. In that respect the record shows that Behrman’s razor was never commercially made and therefore it has in no way brought about any advance in the art, and the trial judge found as a fact that: “The following prior patents disclose structures substantially the same as the blade described in claims 5-, 10, 11, and 12 of the Behrman patent; Sharpnack, No. 1,089,726; Sharpnaek, No. 1,089,-727; Smith, No. 841,729; Brunaeci, No. 933,4-15; Hygonnet, No. 950,820; Shure, No. 1,124,668.”
Wo here note that the fact that Sharpnaek’s blade was used in a' different way and with a different motion than Bejirman’s, in no way detracts from the1 fact that in his blade and contour Behrman’s shows no inventive difference. Agreeing as we do with the finding of fact of the trial judge, the decree that “the.blade claims (Nos. 5, 10, 11, and 12 of the Behrman patent [No. 1,739,-280]) are void by reason of anticipation * * * and by reason of want of patentable novelty over the prior art,” is affirmed.
Such being the case, we turn to the second question, namely, does the use of this unpatented supply blade by the owner of razor frame, bought from the plaintiff, make him an infringer and the blade maker who sold it to him for such use a contributory infringer? This depends on whether the principle of Wilson v. Simpson, 9 How. 109, 13 L. Ed. 66, applies to the present ease. In that regard the trial judge said: “The law governing contributory infringement by renewal of parts in a patented machine stated in Wilson v. Simpson, 9 How. 109, 126, 13 L. Ed. 66, has not been departed from or modified in any essential particular.” That case held: “But if another constituent part of the combination is meant to be only temporary in the use of the whole, and to be frequently replaced, because., it will not last as long as the other parts of the combination, its inventor cannot complain, if he sells the use of his machine, that the purchaser uses it in the way the inventor meant it to be used, and in the only way in which the machine can be used.”
Applying that principle to the replacement blade of a safety razor, the trial judge further said: “In the case at bar the machine is not one which delivers a perishable article consumed in the using, nor are the renewed parts destroyed, nor do they actually wear out in the sense that they cannot by repair (sharpening) be restored to an'indefinite period of usefulness. The need for new parts arises from the fact that it is much more convenient to buy them than to have the old ones restored or repaired, and the further fact that the small cost of the parts allows most users to consult their convenience in this respect. This is just what the plaintiff expects them to do and in fact much of its profit arises from their so doing; Discarding for the moment forms of words and what in some eases appear to be arbitrary tests adopted by the courts, and returning to the fundamental, principle involved it will readily be seen that here is a piece of mechanism in which both the patentee and the public expect that parts, costing a small fraction of the whole price, will in ordinary practice be thrown away after being used a very few times, and new ones purchased to take their place. That being the usual way in which the article is maintained in use, it follows that, in ordinary justice, one who purchases it has ‘a right to suppose that he was free to maintain it in use, without the further consent of the seller.’ ”
Agreeing thereto, the decree below is affirmed.
DAVIS, Circuit Judge, dissents.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 0