A Baltimore company with fewer than five employees is suing Internet giant Facebook for patent infringement, court records show.

The company, WhoGlue Inc., applied for a patent in 2001 which was granted in July 2007, the Baltimore Sun reported Thursday. The patent covered a program for "facilitating communications between user members of an online network," the company's court filing says.

"We didn't call it social networking because that term hadn't been invented," said WhoGlue's founder and Chief Executive Officer Jason Hardebeck.

"We didn't patent something that we thought would be an opportunity to license. We patented it because it was core to our business," he said.

WhoGlue markets its software to nonprofits and associations as a method of managing memberships, the Sun reported.

Facebook spokeswoman Elizabeth Linder said, "We see no merit to this suit and will fight it vigorously."

Facebook, founded in 2004 by several Harvard University students, has more than 300 million active users.