Microsoft has been in some trouble, technically for the last half a decade, over Xbox Live's communication functionality between gamers while gaming.
Peter Hochstein and Jeffrey Tenenbaum patented the method for such chit-chat back in '94, and so they launched legal war at Microsoft and Sony too in 2004, with the latter settling.
Microsoft being the cheeky so-and-so that they are has tried to delay the proceedings for a long as possible, knowing they'd probably lose and have to fork out a rather handsome sum of monies to Hochstein and Tenenbaum.
A single typo held up the case from proceeding in February this year thanks to Microsoft's keen eagle eye and their subsequently declared allergy to bad grammar. Then they bombed the two lawsuit men with 140,000 documents, all without an index to flick through.
Sony opted to just pay them to go away in April, leaving Microsoft the sole target for the case. Perhaps that's why Xbox Live is getting adverts in the dashboard?
Source: Kotaku