Question: When authors submit paper to a journal, the paper will go through the peer review process. When a reviewer accepts to review a paper, the reviewer is then given the power to delay the publication of the paper and the power to reject the paper. From time to time, it has been shown that reviewers abuse the power to commit misconduct. There are many types of misconduct that a reviewer can do, one example is slowing down the review process so that other papers with the same topic have the chance to get published first.

Another example (and considered as the worst misconduct that reviewer can do) is a reviewer plagiarizing the paper that they reviewed and submitting the plagiarized paper to other journal. In 2016, a reviewer from a high-level journal plagiarized and submitted a paper to another journal (read: [[1]](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6310661/) [[2]](https://retractionwatch.com/2016/12/12/dear-peer-reviewer-stole-paper-authors-worst-nightmare/)), which showed that even high-level journals are not immune from this misconduct.

Due to the sheer volume of papers that a journal must process, it is hard for an editor to determine whether the rejected paper is actually a "bad" paper, it is possible that a reviewer intentionally rejected the paper for malicious intent. The same goes for a situation when a reviewer intentionally makes the review process as slow as possible, it is hard to detect whether they intentionally slow down the publication of the paper.

Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves from predatory reviewers?

Answer: 
I'll reiterate my basic point, already made in a comment so brief I didn't think it would be considered a good answer: put (carefully edited/proofread) preprints on-line, on an arXiv-like preprint server, or on your own web site (if it's well established). Or both, why not?

As in other comments: this will give you priority, with or without "peer review".

Yes, if your paper is full of errors, you squander your credibility. Be careful. On another hand, the refereeing process is not currently aimed so much at "improving/correcting" work, but in a gate-keeper function for status.

The prohibition of plagiarism and so on does not depend on peer review!!!
Predatory reviewers are so rare there is no need to do anything to protect yourself. It's so easy to get caught plagiarizing a paper you are reviewing that anyone who does it will have quite a short career. The probability that your reviewer has a similar paper near publication is very low.

If a reviewer is malicious, intentionally making the author's life difficult, then it is the editor's responsibility to discard the review. Similarly, if the reviewer requests inappropriate citations, it is the editor's responsibility to decline.