Annotations in Java cannot inherit from other annotations. This has been known for a long time: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1624084/why-is-not-possible-

Annotations in Java cannot inherit from other annotations. This has been known for a long time: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1624084/why-is-not-possible-to-extend-annotations-in-java http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1624084/why-is-not-possib... Not sure why it is a surprise to the author.