A distinction without a difference. It's functionally the same whether you store the same referral info elsewhere and stuff the cookies "just in time" vs stuffing the cookies all at once beforehand.
Functionally the extension is inserting itself as a second impromptu persistence mechanism ("cookie jar"), allowing it to stuff its cookies at a different phase of the e-commerce flow.
Slightly altered mechanism, same effect, same crime.
Similar actions can result in different verdicts. For example, an act of firing a gun on one end and having a dead body on the other can result in a whole variety of verdicts, which includes (but not limited to) “terrorism”, “murder”, “killing”, “negligence”, or “self-defense”. You can have several functionally identical cases — e.g. same gun, same ammunition, same wounds, etc. - and still end up with a variety of verdicts, from “not guilty” to “death sentence”.
I hope you don't mind if I'll wait for the court verdict on whether it was the same intent or not. Courts usually give more substantiated verdicts with regard to intent when they review all the available evidence, which I assume you don't have (neither does the court at this stage).
Functionally the extension is inserting itself as a second impromptu persistence mechanism ("cookie jar"), allowing it to stuff its cookies at a different phase of the e-commerce flow.
Slightly altered mechanism, same effect, same crime.