diff --git a/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/main/java/org/codehaus/modello/plugin/xdoc/XdocGenerator.java b/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/main/java/org/codehaus/modello/plugin/xdoc/XdocGenerator.java
index 9fceef8d6..289b6c9a6 100644
--- a/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/main/java/org/codehaus/modello/plugin/xdoc/XdocGenerator.java
+++ b/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/main/java/org/codehaus/modello/plugin/xdoc/XdocGenerator.java
@@ -29,6 +29,8 @@
 import java.io.Writer;
 import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
 import java.util.*;
+import java.util.regex.Matcher;
+import java.util.regex.Pattern;
 import java.util.stream.Collectors;
 
 import com.github.chhorz.javadoc.JavaDoc;
@@ -685,6 +687,43 @@ private static void writeMarkupElement(XMLWriter w, String name, String markup)
         w.endElement();
     }
 
+    /**
+     * Pattern matching {@code {@code ...}} and {@code {@literal ...}} inline tags,
+     * including nested braces.
+     */
+    private static final Pattern INLINE_CODE_TAG_PATTERN =
+            Pattern.compile("\\{@(?:code|literal)\\s+((?:[^{}]|\\{[^{}]*\\})*)\\}");
+
+    /**
+     * HTML-escapes {@code <}, {@code >} and {@code &} in {@code s}.
+     * Handles both raw characters and pre-existing HTML entities (e.g. {@code &lt;} from
+     * CDATA-wrapped .mdo descriptions) so that the result is always a clean, once-escaped
+     * HTML string.
+     */
+    private static String escapeHtml(String s) {
+        // Normalise any pre-escaped entities first so we never double-escape
+        String unescaped = s.replace("&lt;", "<").replace("&gt;", ">").replace("&amp;", "&");
+        return unescaped.replace("&", "&amp;").replace("<", "&lt;").replace(">", "&gt;");
+    }
+
+    /**
+     * Pre-processes Javadoc {@code {@code}} and {@code {@literal}} inline tags so that
+     * their content is HTML-escaped before being fed into the HTML/Jsoup pipeline.
+     *
+     * <p>Without this step, content such as {@code {@code <element>}} would be passed
+     * verbatim to the Javadoc parser which wraps it in a {@code <code>} HTML element
+     * without escaping; Jsoup would then silently drop the unknown {@code <element>} tag.</p>
+     */
+    private static String preprocessInlineCodeTags(String text) {
+        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
+        Matcher m = INLINE_CODE_TAG_PATTERN.matcher(text);
+        while (m.find()) {
+            m.appendReplacement(sb, Matcher.quoteReplacement("<code>" + escapeHtml(m.group(1)) + "</code>"));
+        }
+        m.appendTail(sb);
+        return sb.toString();
+    }
+
     /**
      * Ensures that text will have balanced tags
      *
@@ -692,10 +731,14 @@ private static void writeMarkupElement(XMLWriter w, String name, String markup)
      * @return valid XML string
      */
     private static String rewrite(String text) {
+        // Pre-process {@code} / {@literal} tags to HTML-escape their content before the
+        // Javadoc parser and Jsoup pipeline see it; otherwise angle brackets inside those
+        // tags are treated as HTML elements and silently dropped by Jsoup.
+        String preprocessed = preprocessInlineCodeTags(text);
         JavaDoc javaDoc = JavaDocParserBuilder.withStandardJavadocTags()
                 .withOutputType(OutputType.HTML)
                 .build()
-                .parse(text);
+                .parse(preprocessed);
         String html = javaDoc.getDescription()
                 + javaDoc.getTags().stream()
                         .map(XdocGenerator::renderJavaDocTag)
diff --git a/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/test/resources/html4.expected.xml b/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/test/resources/html4.expected.xml
index a629a5bf3..15410f53c 100644
--- a/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/test/resources/html4.expected.xml
+++ b/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/test/resources/html4.expected.xml
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@
       <source>
 &lt;<a href="#class_model">model</a>&gt;
   &lt;extend/&gt;
+  &lt;properties/&gt;
 &lt;/model&gt;
 </source>
       <a name="class_model"/>
@@ -41,8 +42,18 @@ This is a description in HTML4
             <td>1.0.0</td>
             <td>No description.</td>
           </tr>
+          <tr>
+            <td>
+              <code>properties</code>
+            </td>
+            <td>
+              <code>String</code>
+            </td>
+            <td>1.0.0</td>
+            <td>The format is <code>&lt;name&gt;value&lt;/name&gt;</code>.</td>
+          </tr>
         </table>
       </subsection>
     </section>
   </body>
-</document>
+</document>
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/test/resources/html4.mdo b/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/test/resources/html4.mdo
index cb85dc092..b9f1d8d57 100644
--- a/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/test/resources/html4.mdo
+++ b/modello-plugins/modello-plugin-xdoc/src/test/resources/html4.mdo
@@ -31,6 +31,14 @@
           <version>1.0.0+</version>
           <type>String</type>
         </field>
+        <field>
+          <name>properties</name>
+          <version>1.0.0+</version>
+          <type>String</type>
+          <description>
+            The format is {@code &lt;name&gt;value&lt;/name&gt;}.
+          </description>
+        </field>
       </fields>
     </class>
     <class>