It is as it says. I've just found out that the ideas that my supervisors have been picking holes in and discouraging me from using, saying they aren't feasible, need more work, aren't unique, don't fit within my work, they've given to my colleague (who has the exact same supervisory team). I have never talked to my colleague about my work, my research questions, my survey questions but lo and behold he has the EXACT SAME survey and research questions as I do. The only difference to our work is a model. I may even be researching in the same area as my colleague due to some issues with my study site. All of the discouragement by my supervisors has caused me to work at a slower speed trying to find new ideas which I actually witnessed one of my supervisors feed to my colleague today in a group meeting where my colleague presented their work! Where in my case my ideas are flawed for me, they're apparently not just good for him to use but he's getting great feedback. I'm getting negative feedback and concerns over time being taken over my work. It looks like I'm being used like a data or ideas mine for everyone else. This happened before with a colleague and I stopped talking to them about my work. My supervisor has told me that I'm stupid, lack the ability to process higher order thinking, however, on the other hand is quite happy to take my work and use it for his prodigy. I've already had issues with one of my supervisors in the past and it was escalated to a higher level where I made my point. I don't know what to do this time as this is plagiarism on my colleague's part (they've admitted they knew they're doing the same work as me - they're also a year behind me) facilitated by my supervisors. HELP!

Hi there
This is not the first time I have heard of idea poaching by supervisors. I don't know whether you can safeguard your creation by taking out a patent with a solicitor? You may need to have evidence that your ideas pre-date anyone else's in the field to warrant this protection.
I can appreciate that you are in a delicate situation of wishing to finish your PhD amicably. However, if the intention of your supervisors is to poach your materials, then you may need to think about bringing in an outside body such as the QAA to monitor the situation.

I feel for you and all I can think of is 'speak to your supervisor about your worries'. Or, change supervisor ASAP. Or speak to your advisor about your concerns. I have had a similar problem in the past: someone was doing my PhD topic with the same supervisor to mine, although her research questions were slightly different. I was worried about it and I talked to my supervisor, who confirmed that my research focused on different data to hers. I was still concerned about how similar our theses would be, but a few months later I found out that she abandoned the course.

Because we are people who are proud of our ideas, we find it very frustrating when others steal them. My head of department once gave a lecture to the PhD students and said that we shouldn't worry about ideas being plagiarised. How wrong she was! It's very sad when supervisors rip off their students' ideas, and in fact it shows how few idea the supervisor has themselves. However, many PhD projects are mainly a training process without any major potential for intellectual capital, so in the end the problem is often mainly one of lack of professionalism and communication rather than a legal matter. On the other hand if the supervisor or others were to go to market with your ideas, then it would be time to let the legal eagles fly.

When PhD students become very jealous of other students and insist that the other student is stealing their ideas, it really is usually based on a misunderstanding. Particularly, as in the OP's case, they are convinced that more than one student is stealing ideas. When a supervisor has more than one student working on similar topics, there is inevitably going to be some overlap but that mirrors real life. In other words, there will be other students in the UK and elsewhere also working on similar topics, and sometimes they will publish first. Let's face it, most of us work on small refinements or new cases, not ground-breaking research. OP rather than ruin your relationship with your supervisors and the other students entirely, by wasting money on a solicitor to issue threats, or wasting your own time hassling irrelevant government agencies like the QAA, why not talk to your supervisors and say you are worried about overlap and ask how you can make your project distinct. Good research groups do share ideas, as that is how the research process works. Maybe if you and the other student both end up using the same site, you could think in terms of a joint publication i.e. cooperation rather than competition?

Did you apply for an advertised research project or propose your own? If it was an advertisement there will probably be similarities as the department may well keep advertising the project as they are building a research group around a theme. Even if you proposed your own supervisors usually pick projects within their interests so I suspect similarly themed projects are commonplace within a supervisory group.

You say the only difference is the 'model' well this can make all the difference! Their model may be better suited to the research then yours, offer a novel perpective, be more refined/nuanced etc, thus demonstrating the higher order thinking skill your supervisor talks of and indeed offer a different solution/perspective/treatment of data regardless of having similar research questions, meaning a completely different outcome compared to yours.

You can not complain they are follwing you if you then end up using the same study site because of difficulties with yours - pot calling kettle.

The crux of the isue is actually the relationshp with your supervisor, who certainly shouldn't be calling you stupid as that's bullying (or did you deduce this from inference?). You need to mend this either by managing your supervisor better (learn to play the game to at least have a pleasent relationship. I've had to do this in work for the last 10 years with a senior manager who was just awful to me so I feel your pain). Or go to your 2nd supervisor instead or change first sup. Just use them as a means to get this PhD done.

Speed up your work as you said it has slowed, because regarldess if they are doing too similar work it will matter naught as long as you finish and submit first ;-p infact on their heads be it if they are following your info because their claims to new knowledge might be made difficult if your thesis is submitted but a year earlier.

I hope that makes you feel more positive about things ;-D