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:
FOUR ROSES PRODUCTS CO. (FOUR ROSES MALT EXTRACT CO. Substituted) v. SMALL GRAIN DISTILLING & DRUG CO.
Court of Appeals of District of Columbia.
Submitted November 13, 1928.
Decided December 3, 1928.
Petition for Rehearing Denied December 15, 1928.
No. 2081.
Chas R. Allen, of Washington, D. C., for appellant.
Ernest Wilkinson, of Washington, D. C., for appellee.
Before MARTIN, Chief Justice, and ROBB and VAN ORSDELL, Associate Justices.
ROBB, Associate Justice.
Appeal from concurrent decisions of the Patent Office tribunals in a trade-mark opposition proceeding in which the mark “Four Roses” was refused registration to appellant on the ground of conflict with appellee’s mark, which the Patent Office has found is used on goods of the same descriptive properties within the meaning of the Trade-Mark Aet (15 USCA § 81 et seq.).
The Patent Office has found on convincing evidence that appellee was the first to adopt the arbitrary trade-mark here involved. Since the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment appellee has applied this mark to a high-grade whisky which it has legitimately sold to the drug trade. On September 3, 1925, appellee applied for registration, which was subsequently granted. The mark is widely known and of great value.
On December 26, 1925, appellant applied for registration of the same mark for use on “malt syrup for beverage purposes in class 48: Malt beverages, extracts and liquors,’.’ •alleging use since November 4th of the same year. The evidence discloses that appellant’s “malt syrup” is intended for and actually used in making a home brew with a greater alcoholic content than that allowed by law.
We agree with the Patent Office that the goods of the respective parties are gpods of the same descriptive properties within the meaning of the Trade-Mark Act. See John Sexton & Co. v. Schoenhofen Co., 50 App. D. C. 363, 273 F. 327; E-Z Waist Co. v. Reliance Mfg. Co., 52 App. D. C. 291, 286 F. 461; California Packing Corporation v. Halferty, 54 App. D. C. 88, 295 F. 229; Di Santo v. Guarneri, 57 App. D. C. 89, 17 F.(2d) 677.
The record discloses that appellant’s labels carrying the mark have borne the words “Trade-Mark Reg. U. S. Pat. Off.” The mark had not been registered, and of course appellant knew it had not been registered. That such, a legend has some significance in the public mind is apparent. Manifestly, appellant intended to convey to the public the impression that the United States Patent Office had determined the question of the ownership of the mark; in other words, that appellant was its owner and that any other user on goods of the same descriptive properties would be an infringer.
In Levy v. Uri, 31 App. D. C. 441, this court ruled that the Patent Office should not recognize a property right in a mark, and grant it registration as a trade-mark, when the courts, upon the same facts, would decline to protect the mark, if registered, basing its decision, in part, upon the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Worden & Co. v. California Fig Syrup Co., 187 U. S. 528, 23 S. Ct. 164, 47 L. Ed. 282, wherein the court said: “When the owner of a trade-mark applies for an injunction to restrain the defendant from injuring his property by making false representations to the public, it is essential that the plaintiff should not in liis trade-mark, or in his advertisements and business, he himself guilty of any false or misleading representation; that if the plaintiff makes any material false statement in connection with the property which he seeks to protect, he loses his right to claim the assistance of a court of equity; that where any symbol or label claimed as a trademark is so constructed or worded as to make or contain a distinct assertion which is false, no property can be claimed on it, or, in other words, the right to the exclusive use of it cannot be maintained.”
In Holzapfel’s Co. v. Rahtjen’s Co., 183 U. S. 1, 22 S. Ct. 6, 46 L. Ed. 49, it was held that no right to a trade-mark, which includes the word “patent” and which describes the article £s “patented,” can arise when there has been no patent. In Straus v. Notaseme Co., 240 U. S. 179, 36 S. Ct. 288, 60 L. Ed. 590, plaintiff’s trade-mark, as registered, was a rectangle with a black hand running from the left-hand upper to the right-hand lower corner; the upper and lower panels on the two sides of the hand being printed in red. As used, it contained the word “Nótaseme” in white script upon the black band, with the words “Trade-Mark” in small letters upon the white, and beneath the label was printed “Reg. U. S. Pat. Office.” In fact, registration had been refused to the label with the word “Nótaseme” upon it. The court said: “We agree with the Circuit Court that the plaintiff is not in a position to recover for an infringement of a registered trade-mark. The mark that it used held out to the public as registered in the Patent Office precisely the element that had been rejected there. It affirmed that the authority of the United States had sanctioned that for which that authority had been refused, and by grasping at too much lost all, so' far as this ease is concerned.”
As we have many times observed, the trade-mark registration act was designed to prevent and not to promote misrepresentation. The Patent Office, therefore, would have been justified in refusing appellant’s application, quite apart from the opposition of the appellee.
The decision is affirmed.
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