diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 159a974991f..1f18b0368fb 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -75,6 +75,7 @@ Release 0.21.0 - Unreleased
    HBASE-1908  ROOT not reassigned if only one regionserver left
    HBASE-1915  HLog.sync is called way too often, needs to be only called 1x per
                RPC
+   HBASE-1777  column length is not checked before saved to memstore
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-1760  Cleanup TODOs in HTable
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/io/hfile/HFile.java b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/io/hfile/HFile.java
index a7392ab7271..e212cf745f4 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/io/hfile/HFile.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/io/hfile/HFile.java
@@ -138,7 +138,7 @@ public class HFile {
   /**
    * Maximum length of key in HFile.
    */
-  public final static int MAXIMUM_KEY_LENGTH = 64 * 1024;
+  public final static int MAXIMUM_KEY_LENGTH = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
   
   /**
    * Default blocksize for hfile.