Hi Tom,
I can confirm this in the version you are using and it is still a problem in the latest JQT QA version. I tried to find a quick workaround but was not able to find one, except for the one you already suggested with the "<".
I did however realize that this less than sign has bad effects quite widely, not just for Visual WebGui, as I was simply unable to create the tracker entry in Gemini without using the < symbolization.
I did open a tracker entry on the subject though. Please view it here and follow up on our progress.
Palli