The manual implementation of the login logic lacks rate limiting, which was previously provided by the AuthenticatesUsers trait (via the ThrottlesLogins trait it uses). This leaves the login endpoint vulnerable to brute-force attacks. Since you are avoiding framework traits for stability, consider implementing rate limiting manually using Laravel's RateLimiter facade within the login method to maintain security parity.

External HTTP requests should have a defined timeout to prevent the application from hanging if the USPTO API is unresponsive or slow. This should also be applied to the search requests on lines 116 and 136.

            $response = Http::timeout(10)->withHeaders($headers)->acceptJson()->get($url);

The EPO OPS API may return a single object instead of an array when there is only one inventor. In such cases, collect() will create a collection of the object's properties (keys and values), and the subsequent where() filter will fail to find the data because it expects a list of objects. Normalizing the data to a list using Arr::isList ensures the collection logic works correctly for both single and multiple inventors.

                $inventorData = $member[0]['exchange-document']['bibliographic-data']['parties']['inventors']['inventor'] ?? [];
                $inventors = collect(Arr::isList($inventorData) ? $inventorData : [$inventorData])
                    ->where('@data-format', 'original')
                    ->values()
                    ->pluck('inventor-name.name.$')
                    ->filter()
                    ->values()
                    ->all();

Similar to the inventors collection, the applicants data can also be returned as a single object by the API. It should be normalized to a list before filtering to avoid issues with single-applicant patents.

                $applicantData = $member[0]['exchange-document']['bibliographic-data']['parties']['applicants']['applicant'] ?? [];
                $applicants = collect(Arr::isList($applicantData) ? $applicantData : [$applicantData])
                    ->where('@data-format', 'original')
                    ->values()
                    ->pluck('applicant-name.name.$')
                    ->filter()
                    ->values()
                    ->all();

This check introduces a "look-before-you-leap" pattern which is susceptible to race conditions. While it reduces the likelihood of duplicate entries, it doesn't prevent them if two requests occur simultaneously. To truly handle unique constraint violations gracefully as mentioned in the PR description, consider wrapping the eventual insertion logic in a try-catch block for UniqueConstraintViolationException or using atomic operations like firstOrCreate if the subsequent logic allows.