Note: the answer I've accepted works correctly in Precise Pangolin (12.04). It does not work correctly in Oneiric Ocelot.

Original text:

I have an application in which I want to use alt-F1 to access some specific functionality. Unfortunately, Unity in Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) grabs this key combination and shows the launcher. I would like to disable or bypass that behavior, but I have no idea how to accomplish it.

I have read How do I deactivate F1 and F10 keybindings in gnome-terminal? and looked around in all the places pointed-out there and elsewhere, in both the CompizConfig Settings Manager and the gconf-editor. Unfortunately, the alt-F1 combination is nowhere to be found or disabled. In fact I have successfully prevented Gnome/Compiz from intercepting the keybinding in previous distributions (Lucid Lynx and older).

Can anyone tell me where I can prevent Unity from interpreting my keybindings before my application has a chance to respond to them?