PhD project ownership conflict after changing university Student starts a PhD at University A, the student is offered a project conceived by University A supervisor. Then student transfers to University B in agreement with University A supervisor that they will keep working on the project together. Student expands and develops the project and after 9 months at University B the external advisor at University A pulls out of the collaboration due to lack of time to properly supervise student. Student wants to keep working on the project independently given the time and money investment (salary from University B) and the interest for the topic but University A supervisor claims the ownership of the project. Student offers maximum flexibility to A supervisor to try to keep the supervisor involved in the project with little time commitment. Student has now developed a sense of ownership to the project.

How should the student handle the situation? Who owns the project? And what happens if the student keeps working on the project even if A supervisor has not given the green light?
For what it's worth, I don't think either university can own the project directly. Anybody can work on anything, pretty much, but there are many caveats. If code or data were produced, that may be owned by UniA. If there was funding, it's definitely going to stay at UniA. So you may have to find some alternative source of funding to work on the project, but if the supervisor at UniB wants to pay you to work in the same area, you almost certainly can. Now, if you can't come to agreement with the supervisor at UniA, you may also have some trouble publishing when it comes to things they wrote. It would be best to get the two supervisors to come to an amicable agreement to work together on it with you at UniB.