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:
PRO-COL CORPORATION et al., Appellants, v. COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS.
No. 23767.
United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.
Argued Sept. 15, 1970.
Decided Nov. 25, 1970.
Mr. Robert G. Weilacher, Washington, D. C., with whom Mr. Francis C. Browne, Washington, D. C., was on the brief, for appellants.
Mr. Fred W. Sherling, Washington, D. C., with whom S. Wm. Cochran, Acting Solicitor, was on the brief, for ap-pellee.
Before WRIGHT and TAMM, Circuit Judges, and CHRISTENSEN, U.S. District Judge, District of Utah.
Sitting by designation pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 292(c).
PER CURIAM:
Here we are once again asked to overturn a determination by the Patent Office that an alleged invention “would have been obvious at the time [it] was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art * * *” 35 U.S.C. § 103 (1954).
Appellants seek to patent a free-flowing brown sugar having a moisture content in excess of two per cent and containing from three to twelve per cent of finely divided cellulose. (J.A. 95.) A patent is also sought for the brown sugar product described above with a fatty flavoring material added. {Id.) Although the Patent Office granted appellants patents for their novel method of making these products, it denied the product claims themselves on the ground of obviousness. The District Court upheld the Patent Office after the required trial de novo, and we affirm its decision.
Previous decisions of this court clearly delineate the limited scope of our review of Patent Office actions and we need only touch on this subject. Because “the Patent Office [is] an expert body pre-eminently qualified to determine questions of this kind” (Esso Standard Oil Co. v. Sun Oil Co., 97 U.S.App.D.C. 154, 157, 229 F.2d 37, 40 (1956)), its conclusions are entitled to a strong presumption of validity. E.g., Hays v. Brenner, 123 U.S.App.D.C. 96, 98, 357 F.2d 287, 289 (1966). This presumption of validity is reinforced where, as here, the District Court has sustained the Patent Office’s action. Zenith Radio Corp. v. Ladd, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 54, 57, 310 F.2d 859, 862 (1962); Abbott v. Coe, 71 App.D.C. 195, 197-198, 109 F.2d 449, 451-452 (1939). In these circumstances we are authorized to reverse the decision entered below only if the Patent Office did not have “a rational basis for [its] conclusions” (Id. at 197, 109 F.2d at 451, quoting Mississippi Valley Barge Line Co. v. United States, 292 U.S. 282, 286-287, 54 S.Ct. 692, 78 L.Ed. 1260 (1934)) or if the appellants presented new evidence before the District Court which leads to a “thorough conviction” that they should prevail. Hays v. Brenner, supra, 123 U.S.App.D.C. at 98, 357 F.2d at 289; Zenith Radio Corp. v. Ladd, supra, 114 U.S.App.D.C. at 57, 310 F.2d at 862.
With regard to the first possibility, we feel there was clearly a rational basis for the Patent Office’s conclusion that the appellants’ products would have been obvious to the ordinary worker in the field. In reaching this conclusion the Patent Office relied upon only one reference Battista, Patent No. 3,023,104 (Feb. 27, 1962) [hereinafter “Battista” or “the reference”]. Although Battista is primarily concerned with reducing the calorie content of food compositions, it also discloses that the addition of finely divided cellulose to certain ingredients renders these ingredients dry and free-flowing. Thus, Example 10 of the reference indicates that a free-flowing peanut butter streussel type crumb is produced when cellulose crystallite aggregates are mixed in a Hobart mixer and then combined with peanut butter. (J.A. 317.) The example does not say whether the intermediate composition of cellulose crystallite aggregates and brown sugar is free-flowing, but the Patent Office felt this inference to be a very logical one. (J.A. 273.)
The Patent Office also felt that the proportions of brown sugar and cellulose additive which the appellants used could be deduced from a study of Example 10. The ratio of brown sugar to cellulose additive given in appellants’ patent application was different from that given in the example, and appellants submitted the report of an experiment which showed that mixing brown sugar and cellulose crystallite aggregates in the proportions given in Example 10 does not produce a free-flowing brown sugar product; the substance obtained from the experiment was free-flowing but had taken on the properties of the cellulose additive rather than those of the brown sugar. (J.A. 194) However, the Patent Office concluded that a person with ordinary skill in the field who had learned from Battista the free-flowing result attributable to the cellulose additive would have realized that free-flowing brown sugar could be produced by varying the proportions of brown sugar and cellulose given in Example 10. (J.A. 274-75.) In other words, it felt such a person would have recognized that the example was designed to produce low calorie peanut butter streussel, not free-flowing brown sugar, and would have acted accordingly.
The only remaining issue before the Patent Office was whether an ordinary worker in the field who was familiar with Battista would have been aware of a method by which brown sugar and finely divided cellulose could be mixed to produce a free-flowing brown sugar product. In the experiments relied upon by the appellants the only mixer used was a Hobart mixer, the one specified in the reference. Consequently, the Patent Office did not believe these experiments were a “fair representation of what can be done in accordance with the Battista disclosure by the application of ordinary skill in the mixing art.” (J.A. 275.) It obviously thought it likely that one of the other mixing methods known in the industry could have been used to produce a free-flowing brown sugar.
On the basis of the above findings, the Patent Office concluded that the appellants’ products would have been obvious to the ordinary worker in the field familiar with the prior art. Acknowledging the Patent Office’s expertise in these matters, we feel it is beyond question that there was a rational basis for each of its findings and that its ultimate conclusion flows logically from these findings.
The evidence which the appellants presented before the District Court does not compel a result contrary to that reached by the Patent Office. We do not believe this evidence differs substantially from that submitted to the Patent Office. In any event, it is not sufficient to instill in us a “thorough conviction” that the decision entered below should be reversed. Accordingly, we affirm.
Affirmed.
. This is the normal moisture content of brown sugar.

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: 99