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 "natural persons". 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:
Harold E. MARASCO et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. COMPO SHOE MACHINERY CORPORATION, Defendant, Appellee.
No. 6139.
United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.
Dec. 26, 1963.
Robert B. Russell, Boston, Mass., with whom Russell, Chittick & Pfund, Boston, Mass., was on the brief, for appellants,
Robert L. Thompson, Boston, Mass., with whom Gerald Gillerman, Dike, Thompson, Bronstein & Mrose and Slater & Goldman, Boston, Mass., were on the brief, for appellee.
Before WOODBURY, Chief Judge, and HARTIGAN and ALDRICH, Circuit Judges.
HARTIGAN, Circuit Judge.
. . , „ . , , , This is an appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, entered April 5, 1963, declaring invalid all claims of U. S. Patent No. 2,962,736 issued to plaintiff-appellant Harold E. Marasco on December 6, 1960 on application filed February 19, 1959 and assigned by him to plaintiff-appellant Marasco Shoe Machinery Company. The four claims of the Patent were found by the lower court to have been anticipated by Italian Patent Ho. 547,479 granted August 30, 1956 to Alessandro Malverdi and by the “Ghini” machine which embodies the Malverdi patent and which was in use in this country in 1958.
Plaintiffs initially brought an action for infringement against defendantappellee Compo Shoe Machinery Corporation, contending that a split pad box used in the production of shoes and manufactored by Compo infringed the patent in issue. Defendant counterclaimed and asked the court to declare the Marasco patent invalid for (1) want of invention, (2) anticipation and (3) inoperativeness, Chief Judge Sweeney, properly deciding a issues before him, held that the Marasco patent for a split pad box constituted an invention over the conventional unitary pad box and that the patent disclosed an operative device. However, on the issue of anticipation he found the Marasco patent was invalid. The court further stated that if, on appeal, its judgment as to invalidity should be reversed, it finds all plaintiffs’ claims infringed by the defendant.
The pertinent background to this case has been set forth by the lower court and we quote it here:
“The patent in suit relates to a two-section pad box for use in making shoes having ‘Louis’ heels by the tabless process. The Louis heel, which is used on ladies’ shoes, is characterized, in part, by having applied to its front, or breast, a thin flap which is an integral part of the sole. Prior to the development of the tabless process, the sole would be applied to the shoe and cemented to the shoe with the use of a conventional pad box before the heel was attached. That part of the sole which becomes the breast of the heel, was split. The upper part, the part closest to the shoe, is known as the ‘tab’ while the other half, the breast of the heel, is the ‘leaf’. The tab was then also cemented to the shoe, the heel was loosely attached over the tab and the leaf, cemented to the heel by hand, in that order.
“In the tabless process (which was developed in Europe about 1955), as the name implies, the tab is eliminated. The heel is attached to shoe first, and sole and heel breast are cemented to the bottom of the shoe and to the heel in one operation. This requires a pad box by which pressure can be exerted in both directions at the same time.
“Marasco, who from 1933 to 1947 had been an employee of the defendant and a protege of its then president, in the early 1950’s started designing and making shoe machinery on his own and in 1953 he formed the Company. In 1957 a shoe manufacturer asked him to devise a pad box which could simultaneously cement the sole to the bottom of the shoe and the leaf to the breast of the heel.
“The conventional pad box is essentially an oval metal frame which holds a rubber diaphragm covered with leather. The lasted shoe is placed on the diaphragm and is held in place by the sole press while the diaphragm is inflated to exert pressure against the surface to be cemented. Marasco’s solution to the problem posed by the manufacturer was simply to cut a conventional pad box in two and bolt the two sections back together again in such a manner as to leave room for insertion of the heel. This two-part pad box employs two diaphragms with separate air intakes, one of which exerts pressure against the sole and breast of the heel while the other exerts a counter pressure against the back of the heel. This two-part pad box became, with a few refinements, the subject of the patent in suit.”
The “Ghini” machine, fashioned after the Malverdi patent, differs from the Marasco machine in that the rearpart pad section is pivoted to a lever-type handle immediately behind the rear pad which, when pulled back, allows the insertion of heels of various sizes and, when manually closed, pushes the rear-part pad section against the heel while lifting both rearpart and forepart sections against the sole press attached to the above frame. The shoe is then held securely in place while even pressure is applied against the heel from both sides to avoid breakage.
Once the handle has been pushed forward to its adjusted limit, the adjustment being dependent upon the thickness of the heel, it is not necessary for the operator to maintain pressure against the handle in order to keep it from popping out. The action of the linkage (the links controlled by the handle slightly passing the position of straight alignment so that they cannot fall back into an unlocked position) and the inflation of the pads maintain the entire device under pressure.
Where all the elements of a claimed invention are found in a previously constructed and used machine which is capable of performing the same functions as the claimed invention, then the latter has been anticipated by the former. Ranco, Inc. v. Gwynn, 128 F.2d 437 (6th Cir. 1942). Here, the leading elements or their equivalents of the Marasco patent are found in the prior patent of Malverdi. The machines constructed from the two patents are both equipped with complimentary forepart and rear-part pad box sections containing separate flexible pads with vertical portions for engaging opposite faces of an interposed heel. Both provide for equal pressure to be asserted against the heel and the pads to be inflated by means of fluid pressure inlets. The Marasco machine holds the pad sections stationary and in place against longitudinal pressure developed by inflation of the pads through the use of bolts connecting together the external lugs of the forepart and rearpart pads. The equivalent is found in Malverdi in the use of a linkage which becomes mechanically rigid during inflation and accomplishes the same function. Dr. Joseph Harrington, Jr., an expert witness whose qualifications were not objected to by the plaintiffs, successfully testified that all the elements or their equivalents contained in the four claims of Marasco were found by him to be contained in the Malverdi machine. The lower court correctly concluded that the only difference between the two patents was the movement of the rear pad box in Malverdi.
Plaintiffs attempt to overcome the obvious similarities in the two machines by claiming functional advantages due to their fixed two part pad box arrangement. But contrary to their assertion, there is no more adjustment involved in the operation of the “Ghini” machine than there is in the operation of the Marasco machine where the bolts must be unfastened and metal spacers added in order to provide for increases in heel sizes with various style changes. In fact, Marasco’s machine appears to be more of a regression in this area rather than an advance over the prior art. Nor do we find the “Ghini” machine to be more complicated than Marasco’s and plaintiffs fear that the operating handle of the “Ghini” machine can pop out in the operator’s face has already been laid to rest.
It is true that the Patent Examiner cited the Malverdi patent in allowing Marasco’s claims, but any presumption of validity to be gathered from that fact has been sufficiently overcome. Also, there is indication that the examiner’s judgment may not have been based on evidence completely accurate. We are referring to a letter sent to the examiner by Marasco’s attorney informing the examiner that the handle of the “Ghini” machine was held in operative position only by manpower. The text of the Italian patent, a translation of which was possessed by the plaintiffs, stated the exact opposite.
A judgment will be entered affirming the judgment of the district court.
Cementing, in fact, involves several steps, but in this context the word is used to denote only the last step, bolding in place the two parts to be united.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 99