The stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations will be restarted next week, with the possibility of an agreement by the week's end.

"There are some unresolved issues, but I don't believe they are intractable," Trade Minister Andrew Robb said as Australian officials prepared to travel to Atlanta, where officials from 12 nations including the United States, Japan and Singapore will meet to narrow down differences before ministerial talks due later in the week.

Trade Minister Andrew Robb doesn't believe remaining issues are intractable. Credit:Andrew Meares

Talks aimed at creating the world's biggest free-trade zone broke down in Hawaii in August, with disputes over medicines, cars and dairy products the main stumbling blocks.

Mr Robb is understood to have withstood enormous pressure from the US to extend the period of so-called data protection for new biotech medicines known as biologic drugs. The US wanted 12 years in which drug companies could be able to charge high prices, Australia wanted no more than the present five.