To use version 1.2.1 of python WebOB it is nescesary to explicitly load it so as not to get the system version of WebOb. Manually modifying sys.path is an easy and reliable way to use this module. >>> import sys >>> sys.path.insert(0, '/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/WebOb-1.2.1-py2.7.egg') >>> import webob