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:
NATIONAL-STANDARD COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UOP, INC., Defendant-Appellee.
No. 79-1973.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
Argued Feb. 11, 1980.
Decided Feb. 22, 1980.
Martin E. Goldstein, New York City, for plaintiff-appellant.
Albert W. Bicknell, Chicago, Ill., for defendant-appellee.
Before SWYGERT, PELL and TONE, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Plaintiff .is the exclusive licensee of a combination patent on an apparatus for classifying fine-grained solids in wet condition (U.S. Patent No. 3,519,130). It manufactures and sells the apparatus without restrictions as to its use to customers in the coal industry who employ it in drawing off fine particles from slurry. The device sells for approximately $15,000.
A component of the patented combination is an inverted conical sieve, which must be periodically replaced during the life of the device. In addition to the sieve, the patented combination includes a plurality of tangential fluid inlets and a circular guiding trough for gravitationally receiving material to be classified and depositing the material and washing liquid into the upper portions of the sieve. Plaintiff’s device also contains a discharge outlet and an effluent collection box; these elements are not part of the patented combination. Defendant sells replacement sieves for the device to customers of plaintiff. In contrast to the $15,000 price of the entire device, these replacement sieves cost about $5,000, whether purchased from defendant or plaintiff.
The district court entered a summary judgment in favor of defendant after determining (l)'that only the combination and not the sieve is patented, (2) that the customer who purchases the replacement sieve from defendant is not a direct infringer because he is only exercising his right of permissible repair, and (3) that defendant’s manufacture and sale of replacement screens was not contributory infringement or inducement of infringement because the prerequisite direct infringement was lacking. Judge McGarr’s opinion understandably emphasized the first part of the foregoing reasoning because of the manner in which the case was presented in the district court.
Plaintiff does not now dispute the correctness of the district court’s determination that only the combination is patented. It argues, however, that the sale of replacement screens to customers constitutes contributory infringement and inducement’ of infringement because the customers, when they replace the sieves, are rebuilding the patented devices and- not merely repairing them. It is argued that the sieve “is a major part of the claim and is not a staple article of commerce.” Reliance is placed upon 35 U.S.C. § 271(c), which provides liability for contributory infringement.
There can be no contributory infringement in the absence of a direct infringement. Aro Manufacturing Co. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co., 365 U.S. 336, 341, 81 S.Ct. 599, 602, 5 L.Ed.2d 592 (1961) (Aro I). Section 271(c), on which plaintiff relies, presupposes a direct infringement to which the contributory infringement pertains. Id. The sale of a device by plaintiff to a customer carried with it an implied license to use the device and to preserve its fitness for continued use by repair, including “replacement of a spent, unpatented element.” Id. at 346, 81 S.Ct. at 604.
Plaintiff and its customers expected the sieves involved in this case to wear out after a relatively short period of use; the balance of the device was expected to remain operable for a much longer period. Plaintiff’s total device sells for three times the price of a replacement sieve, and the sieve is only one of three elements in the patented combination. Although the device would be useless without the sieve, it would be equally useless without either of the two other elements of the patented combination. This case falls well within the replacement doctrine of Aro I:
Mere replacement of individual unpatented parts, one at a time, whether of the same part repeatedly or different parts successively, is no more than the lawful right of the owner to repair his property.
Id. We cannot view the replacement of the sieve in this case as “a second creation of the patented entity.” Id.
Plaintiff argues that the sieve is the most material, or the dominant, part of the patented combination, relying upon Automotive Parts Co. v. Wisconsin Axle Co., 81 F.2d 125, 127 (6th Cir. 1935). Even applying the test of that case, the replacement of the sieve does not amount to the installation of “new parts [that] so dominate the structural substance of the whole as to justify the conclusion that it has been made anew.” Id. Moreover, the Automotive Parts case preceded Aro I, and Aro I rejected an argument similar to that made by plaintiff here. See 365 U.S. at 344-45, 81 S.Ct. at 603-604.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
On remand from the Sixth Circuit decision in Wisconsin Axle, the district court determined that the new parts did not dominate the structural substance of the device and held that there had been no contributory infringement. The Sixth Circuit affirmed this determination in Timken-Detroit Axle Co. v. Automotive Parts Co., 93 F.2d 76 (6th Cir. 1937).

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