diff --git a/debian/patches/05-db-encoding.patch b/debian/patches/05-db-encoding.patch
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..ad9b0530c2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/debian/patches/05-db-encoding.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+Author: Timothy E. Harris <maintainer@mepiscommunity.org>
+Description:
+ Fix bug that prevents creating a new database if the locale is not a UTF-8 one
+ (Closes: #584976).
+
+diff -Naurp openerp-server.orig/bin/service/web_services.py openerp-server/bin/service/web_services.py
+--- openerp-server.orig/bin/service/web_services.py	2010-03-30 11:24:21.000000000 +0000
++++ openerp-server/bin/service/web_services.py	2010-06-08 09:39:10.000000000 +0000
+@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@ import release
+ import sql_db
+ import tools
+ import locale
++import re
+ from cStringIO import StringIO
+ 
+ logging.basicConfig()
+@@ -64,11 +65,15 @@ class db(netsvc.Service):
+         self._pg_psw_env_var_is_set = False # on win32, pg_dump need the PGPASSWORD env var
+ 
+     def _create_empty_database(self, name):
++        if re.search('utf|UTF', locale.getdefaultlocale()[1]):
++            db_encoding = 'unicode'
++        else:
++            db_encoding = 'LATIN1'
+         db = sql_db.db_connect('template1')
+         cr = db.cursor()
+         try:
+             cr.autocommit(True) # avoid transaction block
+-            cr.execute("""CREATE DATABASE "%s" ENCODING 'unicode' TEMPLATE "template0" """ % name)
++            cr.execute("""CREATE DATABASE "%s" ENCODING '%s' TEMPLATE "template0" """ %(name, db_encoding))
+         finally:
+             cr.close()
+ 
diff --git a/debian/patches/series b/debian/patches/series
index 7819b4cf731..78bdb14b64f 100644
--- a/debian/patches/series
+++ b/debian/patches/series
@@ -2,3 +2,4 @@
 02-migrate.patch
 03-shebang.patch
 04-manpage.patch
+05-db-encoding.patch