Disney Demands Removal of Sculpture : Infringement: The company says the art, displayed on the patio of a Santa Monica complex, violates its copyright. The work features 34 fiberglass figures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

An internationally renowned artist’s sculpture which includes figures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck must be removed from a Santa Monica development, the Walt Disney Co. has demanded.

The $30,000 sculpture, called “Virus,” is at the center of a copyright dispute that has pitted New York artist Dennis Oppenheim against Disney and Maguire Thomas Partners developers.

Confronted with Disney’s complaint, Maguire Thomas has indicated that it may be forced to take the artwork out of its Colorado Place development at Colorado Avenue and 26th Street and request reimbursement--$30,000 for the commission and an additional $5,000 in art-consultant and legal fees.

“This could have a horrendous outcome,” Oppenheim said in a telephone interview from his New York studio. “I’m really in the line of fire.”

The sculpture presented so many fabrication difficulties that he made no profit on the commission, he said.

Robert F. Maguire, managing partner of Maguire Thomas, said Thursday that his firm is “just in the middle of this. It’s awkward. Our assumption was that there wasn’t any copyright problem when we went in to the commission. I hope that some solution can be worked out that is satisfactory to Dennis and the Disney Co.”

The sculpture, designed to contrast an ominous disease with childhood innocence, was commissioned by Maguire Thomas for a patio at the Colorado Place development. The artwork resembles a jungle gym with 34 fiberglass figures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck skewered on a matrix of bronze rods.

Maguire Thomas commissioned the work through art consultant Susan B. Rush, on the basis of photographs of an earlier version of the piece which was exhibited at Ace Contemporary Exhibitions in Los Angeles.

The sculpture was installed more than a year ago, but Disney did not learn of its existence until May. The dispute only recently came to light in copies of correspondence obtained by The Times.

It wasn’t clear how the company discovered the artwork, but Disney’s attorneys charge that Oppenheim has no license to replicate its copyrighted characters and have demanded that he remove the sculpture.

Maguire--who is current president of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board of trustees--took a conciliatory tone on Thursday, but in an earlier letter to the artist, his company charged Oppenheim with misrepresenting “Virus” because a clause in his contract warrants that he had infringed no copyrights.

Oppenheim insists that he accepted the commission in good faith. He never imagined that he was doing anything illegal because he cast the figures from plastic toys made 60 years ago in Japan, which were likely purloined, he said. The figures seemed far removed from Disney’s productions, and he further transformed them into fiberglass in dull shades of green, orange and yellow, he said.

“You go to a flea market, you buy a bunch of figures, two of them turn out to be Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and you put them in a sculpture or a collage. Artists do this all the time. That’s appropriation,” he said, referring to artists’ widespread practice of borrowing images from a variety of sources.

Under federal law, the concept of “fair use” sometimes allows artists a limited use of copyrighted property without permission, but Disney allows no unlicensed replication of its copyrighted images, according to Claire Robinson, Disney’s vice president of intellectual property law, “We have a legal responsibility to defend our copyrights, and we do so aggressively,” she said.

Frequently reproduced Disney images by other artists including Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Wayne Thiebaud are licensed, Robinson said.

Oppenheim said his attempts to negotiate a solution to the problem over the past few months have been unsuccessful. At one point Disney offered him a license for $15,000--which he couldn’t afford--but that offer was retracted, he said. His offer to trade some of his artwork for a license was rejected, he said.

Robinson verified that Disney has no interest in negotiating such a settlement. “We have asked him to remove the sculpture,” she said.

Maguire Thomas has suggested that Oppenheim replace the Disney characters with other figures, but Oppenheim has indicated that the only change in the work that he would consider is cutting up the figures and reassembling them in a more complex, less recognizable form.