opinion: ECONOMY FUSE & MFG. CO. v. CHICAGO FUSE MFG. CO.
  (Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
  April 9, 1926.
  Rehearing Denied June 4, 1926.)
  No. 3557.
  Patents <§=>328.
  Patent No. 1,129,459, for cartridge fuse, held not infringed.
  Appeal from the District Court of the United States for the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Illinois.
  Suit in equity by the Economy Fuse & Manufacturing Company against the Chicago Fuse Manufacturing Company. Decree for defendant, and complainant appeals.
  Affirmed.
  Henry M. Huxley, of Chicago, 111., for appellant.
  Lincoln B. Smith, of Chicago,' 111., for appellee.
  Before ALSCHULER, PAGE, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
  PAGE, Circuit Judge.
  The District Court found noninfringement of claims 2 and 4 of plaintiff’s (appellants) patent No. 1,-129,459. We will consider the broader claim 4: .
  “4. In a cartridge fuse, the combination of a shell, and end cap fitting over each end of said shell, and a helically disposed venting passage cut in the exterior surface of said shell at each end thereof, whereby the gases formed by the blowing of the fuse will escape through said passages to the atmosphere.”
  The sole reference to a “helically disposed venting passage” in the specification follows the statement of the pbjects and the description of the invention, and is as follows: “In order to allow the gases generated by a violent blowing of the fuse to gradually escape, I preferably employ, near each end of the shell 10, the helical venting passage 23, which causes the gases to become materially cooled before reaching the atmosphere.”
  From 23 in Figure 2 is a line to a dot, among the cross-hatching and on the outer side of a longitudinal cross-section of the shell 10. This is the only reference to or description of any “helically disposed venting passage.” These claims were rejected on McCarthy, No. 745,969, dated December 1, 1903, in view of Sargent, No. 1,001,694, dated August 29,1911. After some further argument, the Patent Office allowed the claims. We do not determine the validity of the claims.
  Plaintiff never made the device of the patent, but fastened the cap to the shell, or a-ferrule on the shell, by means of a shallow thread on the inside of the cap, which screwed into the slightly deeper thread on the shell, or ferrule. The evidence clearly establishes the manufacture and sale of many such renewable cartridge fuses by Gehrke more than two years prior to application for plaintiff’s patent, except that Gehrke got his vent by loose-fitting threads. More than two years before plaintiff’s patent was applied for, plaintiff and others manufactured and sold a similar cartridge fuse, in which there was more or less looseness of the threads — however, with no intent to provide a vent.
  One of the main objects in making such cartridge fuses is that they may be readily assembled and disassembled without tools, merely by using the fingers, which requires a looseness in the threads. It is a matter of common knowledge that the joints between such threads cannot, practically or economically, be made either water or air tight, and, if so made, would not admit of finger adjustments. The evidence does not show that the threads in the cap and on the ferrule of defendant’s fuses were looser than necessary or usual in such construction to permit of finger adjustment.
  We are of opinion that there was no infringement, and the decree is affirmed.
instruction: 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.