The current implementation of `java.net.HttpCookie` can only be used to parse cookie headers generated by a server and sent in a HTTP response as a `Set-Cookie` or `Set-Cookie2` header. It does not support parsing of client generated cookie headers.

This is not completely clear from the API documentation of that class. The documentation could be updated to make the current behavior clearer, or preferably, the implementation could be updated to support both behaviors in a future release.