Embedded LaTeX does not work with Unicode quotes

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>]

Hi list,

I have this: „$n\eps\le b$”, and it seems not to be recognized as a
LaTeX fragment.  The manual says:

================
To avoid conflicts with currency specifications, single `$' characters
are only recognized as math delimiters if the enclosed text contains at
most two line breaks, is directly attached to the `$' characters with no
whitespace in between, and if the closing `$' is followed by whitespace,
punctuation or a dash.
================

When I C-u C-x = on the closing quote, I get

================
             position: 54465 of 108125 (50%), restriction: <52496-56766>, column: 152
            character: ” (displayed as ”) (codepoint 8221, #o20035, #x201d)
    preferred charset: unicode (Unicode (ISO10646))
code point in charset: 0x201D
               syntax: . 	which means: punctuation
             category: .:Base, c:Chinese, h:Korean, j:Japanese
             to input: type "C-x 8 RET HEX-CODEPOINT" or "C-x 8 RET NAME"
          buffer code: #xE2 #x80 #x9D
            file code: #xE2 #x80 #x9D (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
              display: by this font (glyph code)
    xft:-unknown-Ubuntu Mono-normal-normal-normal-*-17-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#x71)

Character code properties: customize what to show
  name: RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
  old-name: DOUBLE COMMA QUOTATION MARK
  general-category: Pf (Punctuation, Final quote)
  decomposition: (8221) ('”')

There are text properties here:
  fontified            t
================

so I don't know why it is not recognized as punctuation.  Consequently,
it is exported verbatim (with `\$') into LaTeX, and also (obviously) C-c
C-x C-l does not fontify it.  When I change ” into " (the ASCII #x22
quote), everything is ok.

My questions:

1. Isn't it a bug?

2. If not, what can I do to in my config so that it is recognized
properly?

PS. I just recalled that using \(...\) should help, and indeed it does.
Still, I'm curious about the answer to my questions (now that I
remembered a workaround, especially #1).

TIA,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University