diff --git a/django/http/__init__.py b/django/http/__init__.py
index 7b0c469c51..6353637a95 100644
--- a/django/http/__init__.py
+++ b/django/http/__init__.py
@@ -248,12 +248,40 @@ class QueryDict(MultiValueDict):
             output.extend([urlencode({k: smart_str(v, self.encoding)}) for v in list_])
         return '&'.join(output)
 
+class CompatCookie(SimpleCookie):
+    """
+    Cookie class that handles some issues with browser compatibility.
+    """
+    def value_encode(self, val):
+        # Some browsers do not support quoted-string from RFC 2109,
+        # including some versions of Safari and Internet Explorer.
+        # These browsers split on ';', and some versions of Safari
+        # are known to split on ', '. Therefore, we encode ';' and ','
+
+        # SimpleCookie already does the hard work of encoding and decoding.
+        # It uses octal sequences like '\\012' for newline etc.
+        # and non-ASCII chars.  We just make use of this mechanism, to
+        # avoid introducing two encoding schemes which would be confusing
+        # and especially awkward for javascript.
+
+        # NB, contrary to Python docs, value_encode returns a tuple containing
+        # (real val, encoded_val)
+        val, encoded = super(CompatCookie, self).value_encode(val)
+
+        encoded = encoded.replace(";", "\\073").replace(",","\\054")
+        # If encoded now contains any quoted chars, we need double quotes
+        # around the whole string.
+        if "\\" in encoded and not encoded.startswith('"'):
+            encoded = '"' + encoded + '"'
+
+        return val, encoded
+
 def parse_cookie(cookie):
     if cookie == '':
         return {}
     if not isinstance(cookie, BaseCookie):
         try:
-            c = SimpleCookie()
+            c = CompatCookie()
             c.load(cookie)
         except CookieError:
             # Invalid cookie
@@ -288,7 +316,7 @@ class HttpResponse(object):
         else:
             self._container = [content]
             self._is_string = True
-        self.cookies = SimpleCookie()
+        self.cookies = CompatCookie()
         if status:
             self.status_code = status
 
diff --git a/docs/releases/1.2.txt b/docs/releases/1.2.txt
index f5e5f8118b..a2c70fed06 100644
--- a/docs/releases/1.2.txt
+++ b/docs/releases/1.2.txt
@@ -240,6 +240,15 @@ status code for the test runner is now 0 for success (no failing tests) and 1
 for any number of test failures. If needed, the number of test failures can be
 found at the end of the test runner's output.
 
+Cookie quoting
+--------------
+
+Due to bugs and variations in web browsers, we've slightly changed the way that
+cookie values are encoded. Comma (',') and semi-colon (';') now use the same
+octal encoding mechanism that is used for other special characters.  If you
+were not previously storing either of these two characters in cookies you are
+not affected.
+
 .. _deprecated-features-1.2:
 
 Features deprecated in 1.2
diff --git a/tests/regressiontests/httpwrappers/tests.py b/tests/regressiontests/httpwrappers/tests.py
index 04099be16e..09da4476b4 100644
--- a/tests/regressiontests/httpwrappers/tests.py
+++ b/tests/regressiontests/httpwrappers/tests.py
@@ -465,7 +465,40 @@ BadHeaderError: Header values can't contain newlines (got 'test\\nstr')
 [u'1', u'2', u'3', u'4']
 """
 
-from django.http import QueryDict, HttpResponse
+from django.http import QueryDict, HttpResponse, CompatCookie
+from django.test import TestCase
+
+
+class Cookies(TestCase):
+
+    def test_encode(self):
+        """
+        Test that we don't output tricky characters in encoded value
+        """
+        c = CompatCookie()
+        c['test'] = "An,awkward;value"
+        self.assert_(";" not in c.output()) # IE compat
+        self.assert_("," not in c.output()) # Safari compat
+
+    def test_decode(self):
+        """
+        Test that we can still preserve semi-colons and commas
+        """
+        c = CompatCookie()
+        c['test'] = "An,awkward;value"
+        c2 = CompatCookie()
+        c2.load(c.output())
+        self.assertEqual(c['test'].value, c2['test'].value)
+
+    def test_decode_2(self):
+        """
+        Test that we haven't broken normal encoding
+        """
+        c = CompatCookie()
+        c['test'] = "\xf0"
+        c2 = CompatCookie()
+        c2.load(c.output())
+        self.assertEqual(c['test'].value, c2['test'].value)
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
     import doctest