Re: Trio researching business startup...how to protect our disclosures from each othe
If you are that concerned about IP (including patents and trade secrets) at this stage, you should go to a commercial solicitor to draft up an NDA for the three of you. It will need to be pretty specific in your circumstances, but is easily done. A web-NDA would not be appropriate if you really do want to legally protect yourselves. If you are potentially investing 10s of thousands of euro, then spend €500 to get a custom-made NDA & ownership agreement. You also need someone to explain the patenting process to you so you can answer that question above yourself (in the absence of an ownership agreement to the contrary, or an assumption of trade secret protection, the first to file rule could apply).
The NDA/Agreement should deal with the situation you describe above and also should deal with non-patentable ideas (if capable of trade secret protection), "normal" ideas (including exceptions if it turns out that those ideas are already in the public domain), confidential information, ideas unrelated (or not directly related) to the original reason for getting together, copyright, who gets to protect the idea (e.g. if one or two people leave the "group"), if royalties are paid to someone who comes up with the idea but doesn't want to continue with the business, if royalties get paid to someone who puts in money at the outset but doesn't continue, if there is a timeline on how long the idea/work will be protected by the group before one/all of them can run with it themselves, is there a timeline on when the remaining members of the group must file for patent protection or commercialise the idea, if anyone can disclose/sell/license the idea/work to another party without the others' permission and on and on and on. Those are just some of the things that occur to me at midnight of a Wednesday. So you see the potential complications.
You seem to be taking this seriously - get a solicitor.