Via Twitter, T. Greg Doucette, a criminal defense attorney and former computer scientist, opined that Ubiquiti's lawsuit would be considered an attempt to suppress lawful speech – a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP – in states that have anti-SLAPP laws.
"It's a SLAPP: the coverage by Brian Krebs was substantially true and/or First-Amendment-protected opinion, and the lawsuit basically admits it in the text itself," Doucette wrote. "But Ubiquiti intentionally filed in Virginia, because there's no anti-SLAPP statute there." ®
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/30/ubiquiti_brian_krebs/
They actually appear to have sued a lot of media companies at a glance.
But it's hard to tell. I think it would be more accurate to say "if you want to sue someone for defamation, they'll do it as long as it's not a conflict" :)
(IE they don't seem to be particularly pro or against anything).
It seems like a reasonable firm to hire for defamation if your goal is something like "get people to retract claim/apologize or go at them legally until they do".
But to your point, it's definitely not the "bury them/grind them to dust with a million lawyers" they would get at a large law firm.
https://www.rcfp.org/anti-slapp-guide/virginia/
It's true it's not the "motion gets ruled on within 15 days, before discovery" type of anti-slapp you see elsewhere, but it's not "no anti-SLAPP"
What really will matter is how favorable the state views the defamation-against-corporation claim, whether it has an anti-SLAPP law or not. If the state views it as strong, anti-SLAPP wouldn't matter because it would survive. If the state views it as weak, anti-SLAPP may kill it a little earlier but it will still go badly for them quickly.
The only practical advantage to the anti-SLAPP for defendants like this is that A. you often can get a faster hearing B. you often have guarantees around damages for bad-faith claims.
anti-SLAPP is much more useful when it's david vs goliath, and the small guy either needs a hearing in a week or two or ends up bankrupt from lawyer fees.
The smaller firms are more likely to be willing to say "eh, it's your funeral".