Bug (in apache mod_rewrite) with special characters in URL

If URLs contain character '&' or '/' (case documented in http://drupal.org/node/view/7721), this does not work with my apache 1.3.29 + mod_rewrite.
Even though AFAIK it is a bug in mod_rewrite, I think it would still be useful to have a workaround.
Included patch provides that: a third option for clean URLs being "enable unless & or / occurs in URL". (This is a somewhat more extended patch than is mentioned in the forum post linked above.)