(This is my first time sending a message, hope it works)

 I have a couple of questions I'd like to pose to the general research
administration community re the rights of principal investigators versus the
rights of institutions over "ownership" of a NIH funded grant.

 1. What recourse does a principal investigator have when an institution
terminates them and the entire research team, and installs a new PI,  and
essentially takes the entire project away from him/her?  I understand that the
institute does technically own the project but what recourse does an
investigator have, if any?  What mechanisms can they use to defend themselves
and their reputation?  Especially young investigators just trying to get
started?

 There seems to be a reluctance by NIH to get in the middle of such
fights and a tendancy on their part to believe the institution's version of the
reasons why they did such an act, no matter how small and poorly organized the
institute -- we are not talking about a well recognized university in this
example!   (I hope very much that I am mistaken on this last point and that NIH
would allow for a fair review of all the facts before allowing a change in
personnel to occur, eg, not believe a one sided version of the facts)

 2. What rights do investigators have?  Do they maintain any property
rights over the intellectual property of the grant proposal they originally
conceived, wrote, and got funded?  Especially, if the proposal was conceived and
executed without any help of the actual institute, except for page numbering and
assembling the final package!? eg., the investigators, in this case, were not
currently affiliated with the institution prior to bringing the project to them
..

        Any thoughts on this issue greatly appreciated.  Thank you.