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:
DELTEC, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Moya H. LASTER, Floyd J. Moltchan and Webster B. Harpman, DefendantsAppellees.
No. 15168.
United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.
Jan. 20, 1964.
Francis J. Elempay, Youngstown, Ohio, for appellant.
Jack C. Harris and Fred C. Lanz, Wilson & Wyatt, Youngstown, Ohio, for Floyd H. Laster and Floyd J. Moltchan.
Frank P. Anzellotti, Youngstown, Ohio, for Webster B. Harpman.
Before MILLER and WEICE, Circuit Judges, and DARR, Senior District Judge.
PER CURIAM.
This appeal is from an order of the District Court granting defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint on the ground that it did not state a claim upon which relief could be granted.
The complaint charged the defendants with a conspiracy to violate the anti-trust and patent laws. 15 U.S.C. § 15 and 28 U.S.C. § 1338. It alleged six acts of defendants in support thereof, namely: (1) the filing in the Patent Office by Floyd Laster of a spurious patent application covering design features of the plaintiff’s products; (2) the dissemination to plaintiff’s dealers, distributors, suppliers, business associates, employees and potential purchasers of plaintiff’s products with false information pertaining to the contractual and patent rights of the plaintiff, thus preventing the marketing of plaintiff’s products; (3) the filing in the Patent Office of a false affidavit by the defendant Floyd Moltchan disclaiming inventorship in a pending patent application; (4) the surreptitious obtaining of plaintiff’s drawings, bills of materials, engineering and manufacturing records and threatening to make this information available to other manufacturers who could then compete unfairly with the plaintiff; the filing and prosecution of two unwarranted suits for damages in the Court of Common Pleas, Ma-honing County, Ohio, one of the suits being filed by Laster and the other filed by Moltchan; (6) the prosecuting of an interference proceeding in the Patent Office knowing that the Laster application and the Moltchan disclaimer affidavit were both false.
The complaint further alleged:
“7. Plaintiff is rapidly approaching serious financial difficulty which can be alleviated and possibly avoided altogether by the outright sale of its trencher development project, and while there is a market for this asset, plaintiff finds it impossible to effect any sale because of the existence of the above mentioned interference proceedings in the Patent Office and of defendants’ widespread claims based thereon. Plaintiff will suffer further very serious losses unless it can dispose of this asset very promptly.”
The prayer of the complaint was for the recovery of treble damages for violation of the anti-trust laws and “[t]hat the defendants be ordered to withdraw and abandon the aforesaid Laster U. S. Patent application referred to above, to terminate the above mentioned interference proceedings, and to retract the above mentioned Moltchan ‘disclaimer’' affidavit.”
The controversy between the parties-related to an invention known as a “Ditcher Attachment for Farm-Type-Tractors.” The plaintiff and the defendant Laster had applications for patent, for the ditcher attachment pending in the Patent Office at the same time. The-Patent Office declared an interference-which had not been heard and determined! at the time the present appeal was submitted to this Court. We are advised! that the Patent Office has since ruled in: favor of the defendant Laster and awarded priority of invention to him. Plaintiff has filed an action in the District-Court to determine the priority of invention pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 146. This case is pending and has not yet been tried.
In our judgment, the present action was prematurely brought. The Patent Office had exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine the interference proceeding. Plaintiff had an adequate remedy, which it invoked, under the provisions of 35 U.S.C. § 146 to review the decision of the Patent Office in awarding priority of invention to Laster. In the action under 35 U.S.C. § 146, the Court may determine the questions relating to the applications for patent which plaintiff attempted to litigate in the present action.
Furthermore, if Laster has a valid patent, the anti-trust laws would not be violated by notices sent to plaintiff’s customers informing them of Laster’s patent rights. International Visible Systems Corp. v. Remington-Rand, Inc., 65 F.2d 540, 542 (C.A.6); Cf. Kobe, Inc. v. Dempsey Pump Co., 198 F.2d 416, 425 (C.A.10) and Morny v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 40 F.Supp. 193, 201 (S.D N.Y.).
The District Court lacked jurisdiction of plaintiff’s action for unfair competition because there was no diversity of citizenship. All of the parties were citizens of Ohio.
The judgment of the District Court 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