Who actually produces it (you or a partner) is, at least in my mind, neither here nor there. A huge chunk of manufacturing is outsourced/subcontracted these day

Who actually produces it (you or a partner) is, at least in my mind, neither here nor there. A huge chunk of manufacturing is outsourced/subcontracted these days anyway, so it's pretty difficult to say who is the actual manufacturer of a product anyway. The key question for me is the motivation for the patent - did you come up with some novel idea in order to get it manufactured (and are using patent protection primarily to stop someone ripping off your invention), or did you come up with (or buy) an idea and patent it purely in the hope that some other company independently comes up with the same idea and you can then sue them for patent infringement?