This situation is hardly new; Dalvik is (unsurprisingly) similar to the Danger VM and a few other unlicensed embedded pseudo-Java VMs. (Blast from the past: http://www.networkworld.com/news/0323sun.html)

I disagree with the analysis about patents. Dalvik has Java semantics and probably infringes several Sun patents. But all software these days infringes patents; who cares.