All papers wrote that a three-day meeting of chief negotiators from the 11 TPP member states in Sydney ended on Wednesday. The participants agreed on a plan to freeze some of the rules agreed upon at past TPP negotiations in response to strong requests from the U.S., including the pharmaceutical data protection period, but failed to agree on which rules to freeze. They agreed to reconvene in late September in Tokyo. Noting that the negotiators requested the review of about 50 rules, Mainichi wrote that Japanese chief negotiator Umemoto told reporters after the meeting that the participants agreed to keep the number of rules to be suspended to a minimum. He also said that the 11 TPP partners agreed on the need to achieve good results by November and believed that it is possible to do so. Nikkei wrote that although the 11 nations basically agreed on the pharmaceutical data protection period and patent terms, differences remained over government procurement and copyright.