You can make a case that this is legal according to the cookie spec:
"NAME=VALUE This string is a sequence of characters excluding semi-colon, comma and white space. If there is a need to place such data in the name or value, some encoding method such as URL style %XX encoding is recommended, though no encoding is defined or required."
On the one hand, it implies that there should be only one equals sign. On the other hand, it explicity lists forbidden characters that must be encoded, and equals isn't included. In the spirit of "be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept", I think Zope should parse these. Please submit your patch to Collector if you haven't already.
FYI - this is already fixed for the next release... Brian Lloyd brian@digicool.com Software Engineer 540.371.6909 Digital Creations http://www.digicool.com