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:
SEARS, ROEBUCK & CO. v. VALJEAN et al.
No. 5311.
Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
April 15, 1935.
C. Paul Parker, Earl C. Carlson, arid Lincoln B. Smith, all of Chicago, Ill., for appellant.
Franklin M. Warden, of Chicago, Ill., and Carroll R. Taber, of Lansing, Mich., for appellees.
Before EVANS and SPARKS, Circuit Judges, and WOODWARD, District Judge.
WOODWARD, District Judge.
This is. an appeal from the final decree of the District Court holding that Valjean patent, No. 1,512,869,' for improvements in combustion apparatus, was valid and infringed by appellant as to claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9.
The defenses were invalidity- and non-infringement.
Appellee Motor Wheel Corporation is an exclusive, licensee under the patent in suit and manufactures and sells oil burners for' space heating. The alleged infringing burner is manufactured by the Wehrle Company of Newark, Ohio, and is sold by appellant. The patent related to a liquid fuel burner adapted to be set in domestic stoves and ranges.
Claims numbered 1 and 9 are illustrative of the patent in suit and read as follows:
- “1. Combustion apparatus, embodying a combustion chamber with an opening, a car-bureter shell with an upper discharge opening registering with the combustion chamber opening, the edges of the two openings being spaced apart to form an air entry slot through which-' air enters in a direction across the axis of the openings, the car-bureter shell having air entry openings in its wall, and means to introduce fuel to the carbureter shell.”
“9. Combustion apparatus embodying a combustion chamber with a wall having an opening, a carbureter with a wall having an opening registering with the combustion chamber opening, and means to hold the car-bureter ill such relation to the combustion chamber as to 'sjbace the two walls and openings apart to form an air inlet slot between the walls through which air enters the openings in a direction transverse of their axis.”
The'structure disclosed by the claims of the patent comprises two chambers : A lower carburetor shell having a top wall or cover with a central opening, and an upper combustion chamber having a bottom wall or floor with a central opening registering with the opening in the carburetor shell. The two chafnbers are spaced apart so that the registering edges of the top wall of the carburetor and the bottom wall of the combustion chamber form a circular slot, open to "the atmosphere through which the air required for combustion is permitted to enter. Oil is introduced through a supply pipe aiid drips to the floor of the carburetor shell;
The construction of burners for liquid fuel is old in the art. In general, oil burners were coristructed consisting of two parts —the lower part receiving the oil which is heated to form an oil vapor and the upper part in which combustion occurs. In other words, oil burners consisted of a carburetion chamber and a combustion chamber. The lower, or carburetion, chamber was so designed as to admit a supply of air, referred to in the record as “primary air,” just above the surface of the oil in sufficient quantity to - form k gaseous vapor. The gaseous vapor rises in the carburetor chamber and near its top a supply of air, referred to in the record as “secondary air,” is introduced in order that combustion might occur. Both the “primary air” and “secondary air” were introduced either through perforations or slots in the wall of -the apparatus. Many prior patents disclose this process of burning oil and, although differing in detail, operate upon the general principles above described.
Claim 1, which is typical of all the claims, when presented to the Patent Office, included all of the elements of the claim as finally allowed excepting that as presented it contained the words “an air entry slot” but did not contain the words now found in the claim “through which air enters in a direction across the axis of the openings.” The claim, as presented, was rejected on the prior art, the examiner in rejecting the claim stating: “Applicant claims an annular slot but there is no patentable distinction between a number of peripheral orifices and a peripheral slot.” Thereupon the claim was amended by inserting after the expression “air entry slot” the words “through which air enters in a direction across the axis of the openings.” The effect of the amendment was to incorporate into the claim the specific horizontal slot to give direction to the inflowing air. The slot was intended to be an improvement on mere apertures in the wall of the apparatus which were merely intended to permit the entry of air into the cylinder. The essence of the claim, as amended, was to provide a carburetor chamber and a combustion chamber with an air entry slot formed by the edges of two openings spaced apart so that with the edges so formed they are capable of giving direction to the flow of air across the axis of openings.
The prior art severely limited the patent in suit. In view of the prior art, the claims of the patent are narrowed and are confined to the particular structure therein described. Also, in view of the history of claim 1 of the patent (which is typical of all the claims), the patentee is only entitled, at most, to the precise device mentioned in the claim. Boyd v. Janesville Hay-Tool Co., 158 U. S. 260, 15 S. Ct. 837, 39 L. Ed. 973. The proceedings in the Patent Office are an important aid in interpreting the claims of the patent. Adam v. Folger (C. C. A.) 120 F. 260; Libbey Glass Manufacturing Co. v. Albert Pick Co. (C. C. A.) 63 F.(2d) 469.
Assuming the validity of the patent, it is limited to a very narrow range of equivalents, and any substantial departure from his specific device would avoid infringement.
The two chambers of the accused burner are not spaced apart like the structure of the patent in suit, but are continuous except for a partial removable partition having an opening in its center through which the two chambers communicate, the lower, both for vaporization and combustion, the combustion being completed in the upper radiating chamber. The lower chamber is perforated in the lower portion for the admission of air for vaporization and perforated in its upper portion for admission of sufficient air for complete combustion. In the patent the air to support combustion is drawn through the air entry slot mentioned in the claim. The accused structure does not contain any air entry slot. When appellant’s structure is compared with the patent in suit, the two rows of perforations on appellant’s structure are not equivalent to the air entry slot as claimed in the patent. The accused device departs from an essential element of the claim and there is no infringement. We hold that the accused device does not infringe the claims of the patent in suit and therefore it is unnecessary to express any opinion as to the validity of the patent.
The decree is reversed and the cause remanded, with directions to dismiss the bill.

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