Account for profit
What an agent must do if it profits (without permission) with its principal’s property; what a thief (or breacher of copyright) must do to its victim with the ill-gotten gains of its misfeasance. Importantly, not what a breacher of contract must do to an innocent counterparty: there the measure of compensation is the innocent party’s loss.
Account for profits is a common law remedy for misuse of another’s property. It is not a remedy for breach of contract.
Not the same as loss of profits
The remedy of special damages for loss of profits — when available, which will be hardly ever — compensates an innocent party to a contract for opportunities and profits she would have been able to take had the guilty party not breached the contract. This is different from the remedy of “accounting for profits”, which is a common law remedy for misuse of someone else’s property where the guilty party must disgorge to the owner any profits it has actually made in breach of his contractual or fiduciary duty.