A discontinuous Galerkin method with interior penalty terms is presented for linear Sobolev equation. On appropriate finite element spaces, we apply a symmetric interior penalty Galerkin method to formulate semidiscrete approximate solutions. To deal with a damping term $ abla{cdot}({ abla}u_t)$ included in Sobolev equations, which is the distinct character compared to parabolic differential equations, we choose special test functions. A priori error estimate for the semidiscrete time scheme is analyzed and an optimal $L^infty(L^2)$ error estimation is derived.