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:
EVERLASTING FURNITURE BRACE CO. et al. v. WITTLIFF et al.
No. 4363.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
Oct. 30, 1930.
Max W. Zabel, of Chicago, Ill., for appellants.
Fay, Oberlin & Fay and Horace B. Fay, all of Cleveland, Ohio, and Castle, Williams, Long & Castle, Hargrave A. Long, and Howard P. Castle, all of Chicago, Ill. (W. J. Wesseler, of Cleveland, Ohio, of counsel), for appellee Wittliff.
Before ALSCHULER, SPARKS, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
ANDERSON, Circuit Judge.
Appellees sued appellants for infringement of claims 1, 2, and 7 of patent No. 1,590,921, granted to Theodore H. Wittliff Juno 29, 1926. The District Court held the claims valid and infringed.
The patentee says that his invention- relates to a fastening device “which may be readily applied to the corners of framed structures to hold the elements thereof rigidly together,” and “is also especially adapted for application to chairs, beds, tables, and like articles of furniture.” Such articles become loose from hard or continuous use, and Wittliff devised moans for tightening them up.
Claim 1 reads: “In an article of the character described, the combination of a plurality of bolts adapted to be applied respectively to the corner posts of a frame structure, a fastening member adjustably secured to -the inner end of said bolts, a pair of tension wires adapted to have their respective ends secured to the terminal members of respective pairs of said bolts, and means connecting the central portions of said tension wires for varying the tension thereof.”
Claim 2 differs from claim 1 only in that 2 requires that the plurality of holts he “provided with inwardly faced angular heads.”
Claim 7 reads: “In an article of the character described, the combination of a plurality of fastening bolts having shanks screw-threaded at one end and heads on the opposite ends with diagonal side members inclined toward said shanks, said bolts being adapted to be applied diagonally through the corner posts of a frame structure with said heads engaging the outer faces of said posts, a terminal member having a body portion and angularly disposed ends, one of which is provided with a screw-threaded aperture adapted to engage upon the shank of each of said bolts for adjustment longitudinally thereof and the other of which is-adapted to engage a tensioning member, and tension means disposed centrally of said frame structure and connecting with each of said terminal members for simultaneously applying tension through said bolts against the exterior surfaces of said comer posts.”
"'In each of these claims Wittliff declared that what he had done was to combine the elements set forth. The elements which he combined were these four: (1) Bolts adapted to be applied to the corner posts of a frame structure; (2) a fastening member adjustably secured to the inner ends of the bolts; (3) a pair of tension wires adapted to have their respective ends secured to the terminal members of. respective pairs of the bolts; and (4) means connecting the central portions of the tension wires for varying the tension thereof. . .
Each of these elements was old in the art. Each and all of them are disclosed in the prior patents set forth in this record. The question then is, Did Wittliff combine these old and well-known elements in the sense of the patent law, or did 'he merely bring them together? If he made what is sometimes called a true combination, his patent is valid, even if every element in it was old :and- well-known; but if each element in the combination performs its function unaffected and unmodified by the action of the others, if there is no co-action of these elements with one another, and if their combined result is the result of each element performing its function in its own way, unmodified by the others — each element contributing its share to the work — then such combination is mere aggregation.
To be a patentable combination, “it must form either a new machine of a distinct character and function, or produce a result due to the joint and co-operating action of all the elements, and which is not the mere adding together of separate contributions.” Pickering v. McCullough, 104 U. S. 310, 318, 26 L. Ed. 749. It must produce a new and useful result as the product of the combination and not a mere aggregate of several results, each the result of one of the elements.
“If several old devices are so put together as to produce even a better machine or instrument than waS formerly in use, but each of the old devices does what it had formerly done in the instrument or machine from which it was borrowed, * * * without uniting with other old devices to perform any joint function, it seems that the combination is not patentable.” Brinkerhoff v. Aloe (C. C.) 37 F. 92, 96; affirmed in 146 U. S. 515, 13 S. Ct. 221, 36 L. Ed. 1068.
“Invention is constituted by an integral group of co-operant instrumentalities which by virtue of their united functions conjointly produce a novel resultant directly due to some new functional relationship or relationships established by or between them and possessing industrial utility.” Roberts on Patentability and Patent Interpretation, Vol. 1, page 245.
Appellees in their brief say: “The important feature of the invention is the application of the force on the outside of the corner posts Of the chair or other article of furniture through the medium of bolts applied to the corner posts.”
The patent to Morton, granted in 1900, shows this important feature performing the same function and performing it in the same way as-in Wittliff’s device. Morton applied the force on the outside of the corner posts of the chair or other article of furniture, and applied it through the medium of bolts applied to the corner posts.
Element No. 2, if considered as a mere fastening member secured to the inner end of the bolts, is found in several of the prior patents, and, if stress be placed upon the words “adjustably secured,” then it is clearly shown in the patent to Lewis, issued in 1888, and as a fastening member, adjustable or not adjustable, it functions precisely the same in Lewis and Wittliff.
Elements 3 and 4 appear in several prior patents, and they are shown functioning just as they, do in Wittliff’s device.
To bring these elements together, as Wittliff did, is not invention.
Reversed and remanded, with direction to dismiss the bill for want of equity.

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