I've run into an issue where instanceof works, and then it doesn't. Going into details is difficult, but I think this might be the problem: Reading this: http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=40229 (search for Thread.currentThread), it seems to imply that, even if the two objects are the same class, if you pass them between threads with different class loaders, instanceof (and isAssignableFrom) might still fail. This certainly would explain the behavior I'm having, but I was wondering if anyone could verify it? (I wish the article linked at the beginning of the discussion was still available, but it doesn't seem like it is.) Thanks, Peter