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 "private business and its executives". 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.

Opinion:
MADSEN IRON WORKS v. WOOD et al.
No. 9906.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Jan. 29, 1943.
Rehearing Denied March 15, 1943.
R. Welton Whann and Robert M. Mc-Manigal, both of Los Angeles, Cal. (Kelly L. Taulbee, of Los Angeles, Cal., of counsel), for appellants.
Hackley & Hursh, Roy C. Hackley, Jr., and Jack E. Hursh, all of San Francisco, Cal., for appellees.
Before DENMAN, MATHEWS, and STEPHENS, Circuit Judges.
DENMAN, Circuit Judge.
This is an appeal from a declaratory judgment which holds that the appellees have a valid patent, serial number 1,997,-957, for a feeding mechanism of a -road mixing machine which the judgment also holds appellant had infringed by manufacturing and selling a similar road mixing machine having a mechanically equivalent feeding mechanism. Since we hold that the appellees claimed patent of the feeding mechanism, whether considered alone or as attached to the mixer, has no, novelty over the prior art, it is unnecessary to consider the question of appellant’s infringement.
Appellees’ patent purports to find invention in a feeding mechanism into a portable cylinder carried on wheels with its rounded side parallel to the road, which at its forward end receives from the feed loosened and partially pulverized earth of an existing road into the cylinder, where it is stirred and mixed with mineral oil, the earth being propelled rearward by a double worm which brings the material from its forward entrance to the rear end of the cylinder where it is redeposited.
The machines manufactured under appellees’ claimed patent are of excellent mechanical structure and have had commercial success in thus improving the surfacing Of dirt roads. Great stress is laid on this commercial success. One of the questions we have to consider is whether this is due to inventive novelty in its feeding mechanism, alone or in its attachment to the mixer, or due to mere mechanical excellence of the entire mixing machine as a whole having in it the application of known and established facts and principles of the prior art of mixing pulverized materials.
No novelty is claimed or could be made because the major material is road dirt or because the mixing machine is portable on a wheeled conveyance. Nor is there any novelty in the use of the rearward turning double worm in its moving along of the earth inside the cylinder while the other materials are being mixed with it; nor in the circular turning paddle blades in the mixer set at angles to give at some places a propelling forward and at others a retarding motion to aid in both mixing and moving the material to its rear exit. Nor is there novelty in the flanged scraper which gathered the earth at • the forward end of the cylinder. Nor is there urged here a claim of novelty in the combination of these factors. The only claim of novelty is in the device itself and in the addition of ,the mechanical feed to such a mixer.
A similar road mixing cylinder also parallel to the road and transported on wheels, with road earth moved through it by revolving mechanical equivalents of the worm in the appellees’ machine, was patented to one Popkess in serial number 1,-062,113. In the Popkess patent the opening through which the earth enters is on the lower face of the forward vertical cylinder head. In front of the hole is a horizontal scraper with side flanges angled downward into the pulverized earth on the road which scrapes it upwards and backwards till it comes into contact with the conveying apparatus inside the cylinder, which then carries it backward through the mixer.
Appellee Wood made a model like the Popkess machine with a similar entrance in the forward vertical end of the cylinder and concluded the earth would pile up and be pushed forward. He therefore cut the hole backward into the forward part of the under curved side of the cylinder so that the hole extended from the vertical face diagonally downward across the cylinder’s forward lower end. The flanged scraper was placed at the lower end of the diagonal cut. With the hole thus diagonally cut, the lower part of the two forward blades of the rear propelling worm came in contact with the earth on the scraper and assisted in moving it backwards towards the remaining blades of the worm where the mixing process began. Upon this device, appellees’ patent claims of novelty are
Claim 4.
“* * said rotatable conveying and mixing mechanism in the cylinder having an extension beyond the front end of the cylinder to engage with, and initially act upon, the scooped up material before it reaches the cylinder and to operate to assist in feeding said material into the cylinder as the machine progresses.”
There is no novelty in having a conveying device move material into a mixing machine, whether it be a worm or some' mechanical equivalent such as a series of paddles. Such a device, successive paddles on a rotating belt, is shown to move road earth over a scraper like plow into a mixer for combination with mineral oil, the whole mechanism carried over the road on wheels, in the drawing of the Murray road mixing patent, serial number 884,893. It does not constitute novelty in appellees’ mechanism for feeding earth into the mixer that the mixing process to which the earth is fed is not identical with that of the appellees.
In another patent, serial number 1,332,-987, issued to Julian and Hutchings, for a stationary machine for mixing road materials, the drawing shows a worm revolving outside the cylindrical mixer and moving the material into the cylinder where a propelling and mixing device carries the earth on in the cylinder, there mixing it with the oil, the mass finally emerging at the other end. So far as concerns mechanical equivalents, it is a matter of indifference whether the earth is moved into the worm on its upper side, as in the Julian and Hutchings patent, or on its lower side as in appellees’ device, or that in one case the worm feeds a stationary mixer and in the other the mixer is being moved over a road. Assuming that attaching appellees’ feed to the mixing cylinder was at one time a patentable novelty, it was old in the art when appellee Wood filed his application.
In view of this prior state of the art we are unable to see any invention in the claims of appellees’ patent upon which they rely here. A long known mechanical process or device processing pulverized material does not warrant patenting because its use is commercially profitable when it is applied on similar material at a different place, even though that process or device is there to be used for the first time as a commercial success.
The decree declaring appellees’ patent to be valid and that appellant has infringed is reversed.
Other claims are
Claim 5
“ * * * a scraper blade and a pair of gathering blades carried by the vertically adjustable frame and disposed in front of the cylinder, * *
Claim 7
■“* * tt. a COnveyor carried by the shaft and disposed forwardly of the cylinder and engageable with said material for delivering it into the front end of the cylinder.”
Claim 17
“ * * “ conveying means in front of the cylinder to engage the material and to feed the same into the cylinder, * * *_)>
Claim 20
“ * * * a scraper on the advance end of the cylinder to scoop up the material to be treated, a screw conveyor having its forward end projecting beyond the front end of the cylinder and over the scoop and adapted to engage the scooped-up material before the latter enters the cylinder, * *
Claim 21
“ * * * a conveyor extending through a substantial portion of the cylinder and projecting beyond the front end thereof, constructed and arranged to engage the scooped-up material to deliver it initially into the cylinder, * * *.”
Claim 22
“ * * s: a scraper for scooping up the material from the roadway preparatory to its delivery into the cylinder as the machine progresses over the roadway, a screw conveyor within the cylinder with its forward end projecting beyond the front end of the conveyor and extending over the scraper to engage the scooped up material, * *

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "private business and its executives"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 1