Has anyone had any success using EJBQL to create queries that include a "not equals" parameter?

For example, I'm currently trying to use the following:
![CDATA[SELECT DISTINCT OBJECT(o) FROM ValueText o where o.valueId = ?1 and o.locale <> ?2]]>

Surprisingly, the locale as well as the the valueId parameter is ignored in the result set. Yet, I receive no deployment errors when trying to run this.

Please let me know if you've had success with this issue.

Thanks!
Colleen