Responding to professors' concerns about intellectual property, Yale University has demanded that Versity.com, a commercial website that offers lecture notes, remove all notes for Yale courses from its online repository.

Versity.com is an Internet company that pays students to take notes in large lecture classes at 150 universities across the country. The site then makes the notes available to subscribers.

"We directed them to take down from the website the notes provided and to not put up any more," said Lawrence J. Haas, Yale's director of public affairs.

Versity.com had provided notes for about three dozen Yale courses before the university requested their removal. Upon receiving a fax transmission from Yale's general counsel, the company said they agreed to drop the Yale notes.

A series of professor complaints led to Yale's action.

"Some faculty members had raised their concerns about the practice of their notes being posted without their knowledge or permission," Haas said.

Robert B. Donin, a deputy general counsel at Harvard, said he didn't "believe that Versity.com had any material from Harvard classes on their website."

"In general, faculty members own copyrights to their lecture notes," he said.