Schmidt was on the stand for day seven of the jury trial between Oracle and Google. Oracle wrapped up the copyright portion of its arguments Tuesday, allowing Google to begin its defense.

Oracle accuses Google of infringing its Java patents and copyrights in Google's Android software. Google says it did nothing wrong, and used only the parts of Java that Sun made freely available to anyone.

Before joining Google, Schmidt was CTO of Sun Microsystems when it invented Java in the 1990s. Oracle bought Sun about two years ago, giving it the patents and copyrights to the Java platform.

Schmidt gave the jury a brief history of Java, describing its release as "an almost religious moment."

He told the jury that Google had once hoped to partner with Sun to develop Android using Java, but that negotiations broke off because Google wanted Android to be open source, and Sun was unwilling to give up that much control over Java.