The complete solution including email addresses in path names for spring 4.2 is
<bean id="contentNegotiationManager"
class="org.springframework.web.accept.ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean">
<property name="favorPathExtension" value="false" />
<property name="favorParameter" value="true" />
<property name="mediaTypes">
<value>
json=application/json
xml=application/xml
</value>
</property>
</bean>
<mvc:annotation-driven
content-negotiation-manager="contentNegotiationManager">
<mvc:path-matching suffix-pattern="false" registered-suffixes-only="true" />
</mvc:annotation-driven>
Add this to the application-xml