Punches continues being thrown in what is turning into one of the biggest gaming battles of all time. We are of course referring to the rivalry between EA’s Battlefield 3 and Activision’s Modern Warfare 3, both launching later this year.

In the latest development, it seems a website URL one would usually associate with the Call of Duty brand (ModernWarfare3.com), is instead redirecting users to none other than the Battlefield 3 homepage. No doubt CoD fans who use the URL directly will be quite confused by where they end up.

The URL ‘hijack’ doesn’t seem to have any illegal dealings associated with it, as surprisingly enough the Modern Warfare 3 URL wasn’t registered to Activision. Instead it was privately registered way back in 2009, with the owner’s details not having been made public, CVG reports.

This means that there’s no way to tell if EA actually purchased the URL way back in preparation for this cheeky assault, or if it simply belongs to an attentive Battlefield 3 fan. It seems the redirect update was made yesterday, meaning that either the original owner had made it recently, or the site had changed hands, possibly to EA. The redirect page has since been suspended, probably on the behest of Activision’s infamous legal team.

The URL redirect isn’t the most serious of attacks (most people would use a search engine to find the CoD website anyway), with much fiercer battles taking place in the courtroom. Infinity Ward founders (and CoD creators) Vincent Zampella and Jason West is currently preparing to face Activision CEO Bobby Kotick in court later this year on claims that they were defrauded of $125 million in revenue.

The pair has since formed their own studio (Respawn Entertainment) under the banner of EA, with a large chunk of previous CoD developers breaking away from Activision to join them.

Activision is seeking their own legal claims however, recently filing a countersuit worth some $400 million against the pair and publishers EA. The company claims EA lured the CoD creators away from Activision, labelling West and Zampella as “self-serving schemers”.

While URL chicanery and courtroom battles may make the headlines now, the battle between the two publishing behemoths will ultimately be decided in the game sales sector once both titles launch during October and November.