I finally debugged the root cause of my REST binding error to this bug. If separating the annotated interface from the service interface is a requirement and this bug can't be resolved, I think Keith's comment #2 in the bugzilla should be at least mentioned/highlighted in the documentation. Incidentally, this issue also returned only a NPE while trying to call my service through a SCA binding to the same service with code used from the RemoteInvoker quickstart (HttpInvoker).