After a lot of trying around, I've put the search criteria-string into an object, so that I can control the getter and setter for it. With the setter looking like this | this.criteria = new String(criteria.getBytes("ISO-8859-1"), "UTF-8"); | The search works when the criteria is sent as a page parameter, though it breaks the original form-request. My conclusion based on this is that the form sends a utf-8-encoded string, but the get-request parameter is ISO-8859-1-encoded. If this seems like a reasonable explanation, is there a way around this? Where can I set the encoding for the page parameters? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4100691#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...