jquery mobile mangles input value

jquery mobile mangles input value

I'm trying to send a html escaped value into a form (for sigPad) that looks like this:

  1. < input type= "hidden" name= "signature" class= "signature" value= "[{&quot;lx&quot;:424,&quot;ly&quot;:95,&quot;mx&quot;:424,&quot;my&quot;:94},{&quot;lx&quot;:423,&quot;ly&quot;:93,&quot;mx&quot;:424,&quot;my&quot;:95},{&quot;lx&quot;:422,&quot;ly&quot;:89,&quot;mx&quot;:423,&quot;my&quot;:93},{&quot;lx&quot;:409,&quot;ly&quot;:81,&quot;mx&quot;:422,&quot;my&quot;:89},{&quot;lx&quot;:390,&quot;ly&quot;:70,&quot;mx&quot;:409,&quot;my&quot;:81},{&quot;lx&quot;:362,&quot;ly&quot;:68,&quot;mx&quot;:390,&quot;my&quot;:70},{&quot;lx&quot;:320,&quot;ly&quot;:59,&quot;mx&quot;:362,&quot;my&quot;:68},{&quot;lx&quot;:280,&quot;ly&quot;:53,&quot;mx&quot;:320,&quot;my&quot;:59}]" >
When I leave out jquery-mobile, the page renders fine and the value is usable; I can do
  1. $(".signature").val()
and it returns the correct string. But when I include the jquery-mobile source 
back into the page, the value is empty.

Any ideas?