An expert that prepared a report for a competitor of plaintiff concerning the percentage of construction and demolition trash that plaintiff recycled proved its report was speech protected by CCP 425.16(e) as the recycling rate of waste disposal companies was a subject of intense state and local regulation. There did not need to be a present, on-going controversy on the subject for defendant’s report to fall within the protection of speech on issues of public concern.  Also, defendant’s report was not exempted from protection by CCP 425.17(c) because that section applies only when a competitor disparages another’s goods or services to sell its own.  Here, defendant was an engineering company hired by plaintiff’s competitor.  The statute does not apply to statements by agents or others hired by a competitor, only to statements by the competitor itself.  Plaintiff did not prove it had a probability of success on its complaint because it only criticized defendant’s methodology for computing the percentage of waste it recycled without establishing the actual percentage it did recycle—and thus failed to show that the gist of defendant’s report (that plaintiff claimed a higher recycling rate than it actually achieved) was false.