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:
In re BROWN.
Court of Appeals of District of Columbia.
Submitted Nov. 15, 1928.
Decided Dec. 3, 1928.
No. 2090.
R. K. Stevens, of Washington, D. C., and A. B. Marvin, D. V. Mahoney, and George J. Hesselman, all o'f New York City, for appellant.
T. A. Hostetler, of Washington, D. C., for appellee.
Before MARTIN, Chief Justice, and ROBB and VAN ORSDEL, Associate Justices.
VAN ORSDEL, Associate Justice.
This is an appeal from the decision of the Board of Patent Appeals rejecting claims 1 and 2 and claims 10 to 17 of appellant’s application for a patent on an invention relating to a dry cell battery “depolarizing mixture consisting essentially of oxide of carbon and a conductive carbon intimately mixed.” The application also embraces a method of preparing the mixture by a milling operation.
Claims 1 and 2 read as follows:
“1. In the preparation of a battery de-polarizer, the step which consists in milling particles of conductive carbon having shells of oxide of carbon to strip the shells from the particles and secure intimate contact between said materials.
“2. In the preparation of a battery de-polarizer, the step which consists in milling particles of conductive carbon having shells of oxidized carbonaceous material.”
These claims were rejected on a patent to one Weiss issued May 10,1921, wherein the milling operation described is similar, the' principal distinction being that appellant uses oxide of carbon while Weiss uses manganese dioxide. Weiss describes the conductive material as “graphite or lampblack,” while appellant in his specification uses “graphite and conductive carbon.” It was held by the tribunals below that the substitution of one oxide by another does not constitute invention, and this holding is emphasized by reference to a patent to one Holmes, issued July 16, 1918, wherein the conducting body is described as “graphite or other form of carbon.”
Appellant’s process of milling described in claims 1 and 2, though producing different material, did not entitle appellant to a patent on the old process of Weiss, especially in view of the admission of the appellant that the material he produces is covered by broad claims which have been allowed in his eopending application No. 42090.
Claims 10 to 17, which were rejected on the ground that they claimed an article by the process of manufacture, are sufficiently described in claim 10 as follows: “10. A depolarizing mixture for electric batteries comprising the intimate mixture obtained by the joint milling of an oxide of carbon and conductive carbon.” These claims state a milling process by which the product is obtained. In other words, it is an attempt to define a product by the process of -manufacture. Claims 1 and 2 describe the product, and are not therefore process claims; while claims 10 to 17 describe the process of producing the product. It is a well-settled rule of patent law that claims for a product which is defined by the process of producing it will not be allowed; and the only exception to this rule seems to be in eases where the product involves invention and cannot be defined except by the process used in its creation. In extreme eases of this character, the product claims may be allowed; but that is not this case, especially in view of the broad claims allowed appellant in his copending application No. 42090.
The decision of the Board of Patent Appeals is 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