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 "the federal government, its agencies, and officials". 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:
SHEARER v. ATLAS RADIO CO. et al.
No. 7288.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Jan. 10, 1938.
William L. Day, of Cleveland, Ohio (Day & Day, of Cleveland, Ohio, and L. G. Worstell, Jr., of Athens, Ohio, on the brief), for appellant.
Dexter N. Shaw, of Philadelphia, Pa. (John B. Hull, of Cleveland, Ohio, and Charles H. Howson, of Philadelphia, Pa., on the brief), for appellees.
Before MOORMAN and HICKS, Circuit Judges, and NEVIN, District Judge.
HICKS, Circuit Jiidge.
Suit by Ray Reginald Shearer, the patentee-owner, against Atlas Radio Company, a retail dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, and Philco Radio and Television Corporation, a sales company and distributor for Philco radios, for infringement of claim 1 of patent No. 1,917,554, issued July 11, 1933, for an “Article of Furniture.”
The claim is printed.
The chief defenses were noninvention, noninfringement, and anticipation. The court did not rule upon the issue of validity but considered the question of infringement, found there was none and dismissed the bill.
The patent relates to articles of furniture such as desks, highboys, etc., into which radio receiving sets and speaker units are incorporated. Early speakers were horn-shaped, the sound proceeding from the small end to the listener through the flared portion. But these horns had the weakness of producing dissonances.
To offset these undesirable tonal, qualities, a speaker diaphragm in the shape of a flattened cone was devised. Both the convex and concave side of the cone gave off sounds and as a result some of the lower frequency tones offset each other and could hardly be heard. In order to give strength to these “short circuited” tones, the cone was mounted on a “baffle” board which had the effect of delaying the meeting of the offsetting sounds from the two sides of the cone sufficiently that their depressing effect upon each other tended to be obviated. Rice (patent No. 1,631,646, June 7, 1927) worked out a formula for the size and placement of the baffle whereby the proper delay in the passage of sounds could be achieved.
But mounting the baffle board in a cabinet involved a tendency to compartmentalize the space on either side of it. It was then found that if the rear compartment was too tight the air compressed against the diaphragm cone at certain frequencies, preventing its free vibration and dampening certain tones. Other low frequency masculine tones reacted on the air in the compartment to produce a strong and displeasing resonant effect. For present purposes resonance may be defined as the enhanced response of a vibrating body to its own natural frequency.
To control resonance, Beers, six years later than Rice (patent No. 1,902,609, March 1, 1933), suggested leaving the cabinet substantially open at the rear, providing openings around the baffle, and between it and certain of the walls of the cabinet. His third claim read:
“ * * * said cabinet being substantially open at the back, said device being supported within the cabinet by said baffle, certain of the edges of said baffle extending only into proximity to the interior surfaces of certain of the walls of said cabinet, whereby said cabinet is prevented from accentuating said frequencies during actuation of said sound reproducing device.”
As early as 1929 and 1930 appellees’ licensor in perfecting its Model 302, and using a baffle board mounted flush with the front of the cabinet and thus forming a rear compartment, found that it could reduce resonance by boring large holes in the bottom wall of the compartment and later it was found that the bottom wall could be eliminated altogether. This model was mounted on legs, allowing the free passage of sound underneath.
So far we have dealt with the problem (1) of controlling the low frequency sounds produced by the two sides of the cone; and (2) of eliminating resonance in the rear compartment. It was found desirable not only to delay the passage of sounds from one side of the board to the other, but necessary to furnish them with some outlet ; otherwise resonance would result. The baffle board met the problem of delay and opening the compartment at the rear and underneath seems to have eliminated excess resonance.
There had been no particular problem of resonance in front of the baffle board, since it had been the prevalent practice to mount the board either flush with the cabinet front as in Model 302, or at the back of a very shallow opening front compartment, as in Beers and in Sprague (No. 1,875,171 — 1932).
Into this technical field appellant projected himself by accident. In locating a radio chassis in one of his furniture models he moved it back and forth in the space, which would accommodate the feet of one using the cabinet as a desk, and found a difference in tonal qualities at various .positions. His alleged discovery is embodied in claim 1.
The claim lacks precision. It cal-ls for a compartment “formed by four walls” and divided by one of them into “two sub-compartments.” This is meaningless. Obviously a compartment cannot be both formed and divided by the same wall. By reference to the specifications we find that the large compartment was composed of three walls only, the top and two sides, and that the fourth wall is a partition dividing it into two parts. The large compartment was the “box with the ends knocked out and the bottom knocked out” as described by appellant’s expert. The drawings and specifications indicate that appellant is making claim to a subcompartment in front of the baffle board, 'open at the front and to the floor.
Appellant’s patent was a paper patent. It was never sold nor used, although he brought it to the attention of radio manufacturers. His advance in the realm of audition was but a short one and consisted in the main of applying the same treatment to the space i-n front of the baffle board which had theretofore been applied to the space in its rear.
Assuming, without deciding, that the claim is valid, we think that it should be narrowly construed.
Appellees’ alleged infringing device is the 16X model. Literally, the claim in issue reads upon its construction, but appellant’s subcompartment is also specifically defined in the claim as “forming a resonance chamber” and we are not permitted to disregard this limitation. Lektophone Corporation v. Rola Co., 282 U.S. 168, 51 S.Ct. 93, 75 L.Ed. 274; D’Arcy Spring Co. v. Marshall Ventilated Mattress Co., 6 Cir., 259 F. 236, 240; Dillon Pulley Co. v. McEachran, 6 Cir., 69 F.2d 144, 146. We think that appellant regarded this “resonance chamber” as the principal feature of his invention. In his specification he states: “When the speaker soundboard 50 is located as above described, it divides the recess or compartment 30 into two sub-compartments, the front of which comprises a resonance chamber and the other. of which is adapted to receive the speaker unit. * * * Such a construction has been found to add a desirable resonant quality to the tone of the loud speaker, resulting in a more pleasing sound than where the speaker soundboard was mounted directly at the front of the cabinet, as has been customary in the past.” (Italics ours.)
The evidence tends to show that appellant’s front subcompartment was in fact a resonance chamber, but it fails to show by a fair preponderance that the front cavity or subcompartment of appellees’ Philco 16X was likewise a resonance chamber, and indeed, we think that the evidence shows that it was not. This alleged infringing model was manufactured under patent No. 1,866,603, July 12, 1932, to Schlenker for an acoustic device. Schlenker had a different type of diaphragm mounted on the usual baffle board. His patent disclosed a cavity in front of the board, wedge-shaped, in cross-section. The board was mounted an inch or so from the front of the cabinet and leaned back at an oblique angle to the floor, being secured along its edges to the walls on either side. The upper edge was perhaps six or seven inches from the front of the cabinet. In o support of the oblique-positioning of the board it was shown that since the tones proceed from the speaker at right angles to the baffle board when vertically mounted, and therefore parallel with the floor, they move in a plane lower than the ears of the listener in the ordinary living room, but, tilting the board backward allowed them to proceed upward at an angle and hence into the range of the listener’s ears.
The leaning baffle boards of Schlenker and of appellees’ Philco 16X model were not intended as any part of a front resonance chamber. They had to do only with the direction of sound waves. Appellant’s expert does not characterize the forward cavity in Philco 16X as a resonance chamber. Elaborate tests conducted by appellees’ experts, among them Schlenker himself, demonstrate rather clearly that the front cavity of the Philco 16X model had- no effective resonance. Its area and peculiar shape were not conducive to resonance. We concur therefore in the opinion of the District Judge that there was no infringement of the claim in issue.
Appellees’ model 16X rests directly upon the floor and appellees insist that the floor constitutes its bottom wall and that it is thus differentiated from appellant’s construction, which has an open bottom. We find no necessity for considering this contention.
The decree of the District Court is affirmed.
“1. A cabinet having a compartment for a speaker unit, said compartment being formed by four wails comprising a top wall, two side walls and a partition wall dividing said compartment into two sub-compartments by being connected 1» the top wall and the said side walla whereby one of said sub-compartments has only four walls including the partition wall and thus forming a resonance chamber and a speaker unit mounted in the other of said compartments, the speaker unit being arranged in said last named sub-compartment to entirely elose a large opening formed in said partition wall whereby the speaker unit will direct the sound produced thereby to said resonance chamber.”

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

Choices:

Answer: 0