35Having regard to that independence and the very clear distinction between the proceedings for the taking of evidence, on the one hand, and any substantive procedure, on the other, the concept of an ‘equivalent document’ to a document instituting legal proceedings, set out in Article 30 of Regulation No 44/2001, must be interpreted as meaning that a document instituting proceedings for the taking of evidence cannot be regarded, for the purposes of assessing a situation of lis pendens and of determining which court is the court first seised within the meaning of Article 27(1) of that regulation, as also being the document instituting the substantive proceedings. Moreover, such an interpretation would be incompatible with the objective pursued by point 1 of Article 30 thereof, which, as set out in Paragraph 30 of this judgment, seeks to permit the simple and uniform identification of the time at which a court is seised.
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