diff --git a/explainer.md b/explainer.md
index df8ef27..f850d33 100644
--- a/explainer.md
+++ b/explainer.md
@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ behavior in most modern browsers. When practical the [`__Host-` cookie name pref
 Serialization of expiration times for non-session cookies in a special cookie-specific format has proven cumbersome,
 so this API allows JavaScript Date objects and numeric timestamps (milliseconds since the beginning of the Unix epoch) to be used instead. The inconsistently-implemented Max-Age parameter is not exposed, although similar functionality is available for the specific case of expiring a cookie.
 
-Cookies without `=` in their HTTP Cookie header serialization are treated as having an empty name, consistent with the majority of current browsers. Such cookies are required to have a non-empty value when set. Such a cookie is not readable using this API unless its value is nonempty or the browser normalizes it to have `=` in its serialization.
+Cookies without `=` in their HTTP Cookie header serialization are treated as having an empty name, consistent with the majority of current browsers. Cookies with an empty name cannot be set using values containing `=` as this would result in ambiguous serializations in the majority of current browsers.
 
 Internationalized cookie usage from scripts has to date been slow and browser-specific due to lack of interoperability because although several major browsers use UTF-8 interpretation for cookie data, historically Safari and browsers based on WinINet have not. This API mandates UTF-8 interpretation for cookies read or written by this API.