RIM has filed a new patent application that appears to incorporate a way to provide advertising in emails. The application suggests that a BlackBerry would scan an email for keywords or phrases and then provide some kind of multimedia content based on what it finds.

Here's a clip from the claims portion of the patent application:

"1. A method for incorporating multimedia content into a message handled by a mobile device, said method comprising:examining content in a message being handled by a mobile device to determine if one or more portions of said content in said message match predetermined criteria;for each match, identifying multimedia content to be associated with the corresponding one of said one or more portions of said message, said multimedia content configured to be accessed through selection of said corresponding one of said one or more portions of said content; andmodifying said message to include, for each match, a linking mechanism visually identifiable with said corresponding one of said one or more portions, wherein selection of said linking mechanism reveals said corresponding multimedia content.

2. The method according to claim 1 wherein said multimedia content comprises advertising content. "

It should be noted that RIM files lots of patents that they never really use, but if RIM is planning to include advertising in user emails we are very, very sad. Unless they provide the BlackBerry service for FREE, there's just no excuse for that.