Comment by fallingknife

But if you did pirate the book, and let's say it cost $50, and then you used it to write a play based on that book and made $1 million selling that, only the $50 loss to the publisher would be relevant to the lawsuit. The fact that you wrote a non-infringing play based on it and made $1 million would be irrelevant to the case. The publisher would have no claim to it.