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:
MANUFACTURERS SYSTEMS, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ADM INDUSTRIES, INC., Indiana Tool & Mfg. Co., Inc., Drexell (Rex) L. Simpson and AMS of Indiana, Inc., Defendants-Appellees.
No. 78-1406.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
Argued Nov. 6, 1978.
Decided Jan. 19, 1979.
Kenneth D. Siegfried, Minneapolis, Minn., for plaintiff-appellant.
Granger Cook, Jr., Chicago, 111., for defendants-appellees.
Before FAIRCHILD, Chief Judge, TONE and BAUER, Circuit Judges.
The decision in this case was originally issued as an unpublished order on January 19, 1979. In response to a motion to publish, the court has decided to publish the introduction and Part I of the decision but not Part II.
PER CURIAM.
The District Court found that the patent claims asserted in this action by the appellant Manufacturers Systems’ patents, Claim 8 of 3,636,903 (the machine patent), Claim 22 of 28,088 (the method patent), and Claim 4 of 3,757,830 (the product patent) were invalid for obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103, and therefore entered judgment for the defendants in Manufacturers Systems’ infringement suit. [198 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 223 (1978).] The facts are set forth in the findings of the District Court and will not be repeated here. For the reasons stated below, we affirm the judgment.
I.
The District Court found that the Vulcan, Wogerbauer, and Lockformer machines, methods, and products and the Tishken method and product were all prior art relevant to the patents in suit. Manufacturers Systems asserts in various ways throughout the argument that none of this prior art is relevant to any of those patents, because it relates to products different from the ducts which are the subject of those patents. The introductory paragraph of each of the patents refers to a specific kind of duct: “heat duct” (machine patent), “air duct” (method patent), and “heating, cooling, and ventilating air conduit” (product patent). The Vulcan machine and method produce porch enclosure frames. The Wogerbauer machine and method produce “fold flange tubing,” which is used to make doors, windows, and frames. The Lockformer machine and method produce “locks” used to connect sections of heating duet. The Tishken method produces tubing used in automobile air conditioner condensers. We agree with the District Court’s conclusion that this prior art is relevant to the patents in issue here.
The problems associated with producing a rectangular duct from two continuous sheets of metal that the teaching of the patents in suit was said to overcome were not unique to rectangular duct used for heating and ventilating. Cf., e. g., Exhibits, Book 1, 34. Whatever the intended end-use, the problems would be similar, if not identical; therefore, the relevant art would include machines and methods for forming and bending metals. Cf. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 35, 86 S.Ct. 684, 15 L.Ed.2d 545 (1966) (container lids for liquid containers having pouring spouts relevant to similar lids for containers with pump sprayers). As the District Court found, “the Patent Office . . . cited against the machine and method patents in suit, at least four patents disclosing machines and methods for making products other than heat ducts.” App. at 59 (emphasis in original). Indeed, the applicants “called to the attention of the Patent Office patents disclosing machines for making products other than heat ducts and never characterized them as ‘nonanalogous.’ ” Id. at 60. Finally, as to the product patent, we note that the applicants attempted to amend the claims by “restrictpng] the invention to the heating, cooling and ventilating fields [because] the broader form of the invention as presently covered by claim 14 [product patent claim 1] would cover, in effect, any conduit capable of conveying air, irrespective of its size or configuration.” Exhibits, Book 1 at 103. The Patent Office entered the proposed amendment as “to matters of form not affecting the scope of the invention.” Id. at 104.
We do not think that any of these facts determine the scope of the pertinent art or estop, Manufacturers Systems from contending that the relevant art is limited to machines and methods for producing heating or ventilating duct or that the relevant art as to the product patent is heating and ventilating duct. Nevertheless, that neither the Patent Office nor the applicants thought that the relevant art was limited to these areas at the time the patents were issued supports our conclusion that for the purposes of 35 U.S.C. § 103 the relevant art includes machines and methods for producing metal duct, whatever the intended use of the product. See Graham v. John Deere Co., supra, 383 U.S. at 35-36 & n. 18, 86 S.Ct. 684; Mandel Brothers v. Wallace, 335 U.S. 291, 294-96, 69 S.Ct. 73, 93 L.Ed. 12 (1948); Cuno Engineering Corp. v. Automatic Devices Corp., 314 U.S. 84, 88-89, 62 S.Ct. 37, 86 L.Ed. 58 (1941).
Manufacturers Systems vigorously asserts that the District Court erred in not requiring the defendants to meet a standard of proof higher than clear and convincing in order to establish that the Vulcan machine, method, and product were prior to the alleged inventions of the patents. This argument seems to be based on the assumptions that before the Vulcan machine can be considered as prior art for purposes of § 103, it must first be shown to be within § 102(a) or (g), and that under those provisions proof must be such as to leave no reasonable doubt. Plaintiff cites Pleatmaster, Inc. v. J. L. Golding Mfg. Co., 240 F.2d 894, 898 (7th Cir. 1957). The passage in Pleatmaster relied upon dealt with establishing a date of invention earlier than the date on which the inventor applied for a patent. The Vulcan machine, method, and product were not claimed to be inventions but simply prior uses, so § 102(g) has no relevance. Assuming § 102(a) were involved here, see National Rolled Thread Die Co. v. E. W. Ferry Screw Products, Inc., 541 F.2d 593, 596 (6th Cir. 1976), there would be no reason to differentiate between the standard of proof under that subsection and the standard under § 102(b), id., which is clear and convincing evidence. Red Cross Manufacturing Corp. v. Toro Sales Co., 525 F.2d 1135, 1139 (7th Cir. 1975). That is also the standard under § 103. See, e. g., Chicago Rawhide Manufacturing Co. v. Crane Packing Co., 523 F.2d 452, 457-58 (7th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1091, 96 S.Ct. 887, 47 L.Ed.2d 103 (1976). The evidence presented to the District Court, though primarily oral, was sufficient to meet this burden of proof, and therefore the court’s findings that the Vulcan machine, method, and product were prior to the alleged invention in suit are not clearly erroneous.
[Part II not published.]
Affirmed.

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