During cross-examination on Tuesday by Oracle attorney Dan Wall, Livermore said HP had not considered asking Oracle to sign a contract for porting its software to Itanium until the time of the Hurd Agreement because that wasn't the Silicon Valley way. With a handful of exceptions, porting software to another company's hardware platform is not done under written contracts unless money changes hands, she said.

"That had not been the way that Oracle and HP operated," Livermore said.

Wall also grilled Livermore about HP's Itanium partnership with Intel, which Oracle claims is nothing more than HP keeping the chip line on life support through cash infusions. Livermore said HP's support for Itanium, in the form of $88 million per year to Intel, is a partnership investment in a product that's important to HP.

At one point, Wall asked Livermore if she had ever heard use of the word "Itanic," which critics have used to compare Itanium to the ill-fated luxury liner Titanic.

"Not by anyone I like or respect," she said.